First Day of Second Grade

Hard to believe school has already started here!

Can you guess who he is?

Later this week, Carter will be performing a monologue he wrote for his This Land Is Our Land unit at school. We just finished his costume. Can you guess who he is playing?







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First Day First Grade

Hard to believe it, but today was the first day of school!

Mama Helen has been here in the week leading up to the first day of first grade

Carter: Stop taking pictures already!

Me: Ha, ha! You can't stop me!

John's Christmas "Show"

Like they do at Thanksgiving, John's school rolls the babies through the audience at the Christmas performance. This time, Thomas did attend because there was a parents mixer afterwards. Apparently, there were only two parents (me and one dad) that did not attend this momentous event for our babies. I am glad to have the pictures, and I'm thankful for Thomas for going.

Most of the babies rode in the crib in bumbo seats

But John got to be carried by Ms Gloria

Ms Gloria makes sure we're taking good care of John

First Expedition

I blogged previously about Carter's school. It's an Expeditionary Learning school. During an expedition, much of the learning is shaped around a particular topic.

Kindergarteners do two expeditions during the school year, and the first one just finished up. The expedition was on Signs, Symbols and Self.

I chaperoned a field trip at the beginning of the expedition back in September. We walked from the school to the town square where the kids had to complete a scavenger hunt for symbols and signs and had to find community helpers and try to spot their tools.

The expedition culminated on Friday with a learning celebration in which the kids got a chance to be the teacher, taking their parents through the classroom to show off their work. Every surface in the classroom was covered with work related to the expedition, and it was easy to see how they had integrated math, reading, social studies and Spanish into the expedition. One thing I loved was that they worked a lot on revising their work, so all the final products were on the walls, but each kid also had a folder that contained early drafts of their work.



Each child used created their own family flag. The symbols on our family flag represent our family members, our love of dancing, pepperoni pizza and birthdays.




The key for the flag symbols was written in Spanish.




As the kids explained their work, a slide show displayed photos from the 6 week expedition.




Another project: Drawing well-known US symbols. Carter really wants to visit DC now. He drew the Washington Monument, but he mostly wants to visit the Lincoln Memorial. As he told us many times, "That's Abraham Lincoln. He was president but he died."




Another project: Community Helper puppets. Carter's is he first one pictured.




Another project: They used a key to look up and copy Native American symbols onto a vest for thanksgiving.


There was more, but that's a little taste of Carter's first expedition! The main final product was a legacy flag that the Kindergarteners created together for the school's weekly community circle. The kids were all so proud of their work, and Carter was particularly excited to get to play teacher!

Carter on Kindergarten

According to a couple of the grandparents, my post on Kindergarten was insufficient, so here's some more directly from Carter on his Kindergarten experience, 3 days in:

We have recess. And we go outside. We read the morning message. We read stories about kindergarten. And we can have sports, like PE today. We have lunchtime. You have to get your milk and then you have to get your tray and then you have to go to the numbers and put your tray down and do your number [they have to enter a 4 digit number that debits the meal from their account]. And then you go to your table. I have chocolate milk and skim milk. We have mac and cheese and fish sticks and mashed potatoes. There are good teachers and they are nice and they are my friends. You go to the auditorium in the morning before you go to the class [they have an assembly every morning for 5 minutes, 20 minutes on Fridays]. We say the Pledge of Allegiance. Then after the auditorium we go to the classroom. We never play in centers [in the classroom]. After school, I get on the bus. And then we go to music camp. It's a good time on the bus because sometimes you are sitting behind your friends. My friends are waiting for me when I get off. [At music camp], after snack we have playtime. We do music. We do the moon song. I learn how to play the piano. You have to put all your fingers on the right key and you have to press down. And all your fingers have to press down and that's "smash".

And a little more from me:
I think we'll be quite pleased with his school. It's really picturesque (I remarked as we left the first morning how very different it is from the school he would have gone to if we'd stayed in Brooklyn). It's one of four K-3 schools in our local school district. After 3rd grade, there is only a single school in the district for grades 4-5, 6-8 and 9-12. Our school district is a charter school system (one of the first in the country, apparently), and the elementary schools are all expeditionary learning schools. At the morning assembly each morning, the kids all recite the school motto and the Pledge of Allegiance in both English and Spanish, and then one of the older students (older as in 3rd grade) talks about the expeditionary learning design principal of the month. Apparently the Friday assemblies have more to them, including the school band (which looks, based on what I've seen on stage, like it may be heavy on the xylophone). Parents are welcome to stay for the assembly any day, but are particularly encouraged to attend the Friday assemblies, so we'll learn more about that tomorrow...

Kindergarten!

I can hardly believe it, but today was Carter's first day of Kindergarten!

(Yes, part of my disbelief comes from the fact that it's the 2nd of August).

Ready to go with his new backpack!

He tried to tell us to just drop him off, "I know where my classroom is," but we walked him inside anyway.

After school he got to choose his own special dinner...

I'm pretty sure that face is thanking his Cart Cart for introducing him to McDonald's.

5 Day School Week?

Want to know how long it's been since Carter's school was open 5 days in a row?

Since the week of December 6th.

Yeah. I have high hopes for next week.

Malpractice?

Carter had some tests run today to check up on his solitary right kidney. They did an ultrasound and drew blood. Thomas took Carter to the appointment.  As I was catching up with him on his day, it went something like this:

Me: Carter, how was your day?

Carter: (rambles on and on about the Halloween carnival at school, his friends, his lunch, his trip to the playground, etc.)

Me: And did you go to the doctor today?

Carter: (remembering) Oh. OH! I have to tell you about the end! At the end of the doctor...(pause, and then, incredulous) they SHOT me. The doctor shot me. And I cried.

I don't know much, but I'm pretty sure the doctor isn't supposed to shoot you, unless maybe you're a horse? Regardless, Carter apparently recovered pretty quickly after the "shot" was removed.

And in recent malparenting...

This was K week at Carter's school. Every week, his class studies a letter, and every week, they send home a kid-crafted "book" that we are supposed to fill with pictures that start with the letter of the week. The kids share their books for show-and-tell on Friday, along with other items from home that start with "K". After15 weeks of this, our magazine supply is definitely looking a bit scrappy. And this activity is most definitely easier for some letters than others.

This week, we left the K book to be completed onThursday night, but then we were invited to have dinner with some friends that night. So... I got creative and suggested to Carter that we skip the homework and buy a value pack of Kit Kats for his class so he could point out the Ks on the package at show-and-tell instead.

Needless to say, he was thrilled with the idea. His father... not so much.

Explorer of the Week

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A Lucky Boy

A recent Carter quote: "I'm a lucky boy." And he really is. For lots of reasons, but here are a few from the last couple of weeks.

We live in such a great town! Recently, the city held it's annual touch-a-truck day, where they park all the city vehicles in a lot to let the kids play in them. Carter played in a dumptruck, an electric meter-maid car, a SWAT team truck, an ambulance, a firetruck, and more. It was a little insane -- and very noisy (they let the kids operate the sirens), but Carter had a blast!

On the topic of our great town, this weekend the city held an Easter egg "hunt". I say "hunt" because what they actually do is toss candy all over the lawn (NO hiding) and let the kids have a free-for-all grabbing it up into their baskets (you can see all the candy scattered on the ground behind Carter in the picture below, taken just before they said "Go!"). We "hunted" in the Kindergarten section of the lawn because the candy was WAY better (and the lawn much less crowded) than in the Preschool section.

Carter's class had a camping day last Friday. They pitched tents, napped in sleeping bags and ate smores. I went for part of it to help and got a few photos. We were one of only 3 families that forgot to send PJs for this activity, but we did bring one of the tents, so I think it evens out.

Fun Fridays

From the same day care administrator that brought you this gem (notice the 'g'), we have the following note regarding some special summer days they will be having:

"On certain weeks there will be Fun Fridays were [sic] we the teachers and students will make ice cream, smoothies, butter, etc., which will still include water play."

Which one of these is not like the other....

Not sure about you, but having 3 year olds churning butter in the summer in the South does not exactly sound like a "Fun Friday" for anyone! Do they get little bonnets at least?

Show-and-Tell

Friday is show-and-tell day at Carter's school. Each week they are supposed to bring in something starting with a different letter. This week is the letter g. We just received an email with some suggestions for what the kids could bring this week. Here's the list

Gel
Gloss (as in lip gloss)
Grape lip balm
Gillette razor
Grout
Green
Garbage Man (Oscar)

Seriously?!

Silly Hair Day

The first Friday of each month, Carter's school has "spirit day", on which we are asked to do something funny to them (dress them in silly socks, their (our) favorite color, etc.). This month was silly hair day. Thankfully, Carter is in serious need of a haircut, so we were able to participate fully in the silliness.

Hello Mr. Turkey

Yesterday they had the Thanksgiving program at Carter's school. Here is the 2 year old contribution. Ours is the tall one in the yellow shirt waving throughout most of the video. Carter watched this video about 300 times last night. Everytime it ended he would say, "More me!"


We're headed to Arkansas early in the morning and will be without internet till Sunday. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Potty?!

Carter apparently used the potty not once, but TWICE, today at school. We've been working on potty awareness for months at home, and he'll occasionally sit on it, but there's never been any...action. And then today--his second day at school--he not only went on the potty, but he asked to use the potty and then went (i.e. it wasn't just an accident of good timing). And he did it twice.

We are most impressed. But we are not holding our breath for him to repeat the feat at home anytime soon!

First Day (updated)

Today is Carter's first day at his new school and--so far so good! .

I think the four visits we made in the last two weeks definitely helped. He had almost no trouble saying goodbye. My stroke of brilliance in getting him a new backpack for today may have had something to do with his excitment to GO to school, but even once it was unpacked and put away, he seemed happy to be there.

I'll update this post this afternoon to let you know how the rest of the day turns out!

Trying out his new backback yesterday

Ready to go this morning in his new backpack and (huge) new shoes!

Update: Well, the first day went even better than we could have hoped. He played, he ate, he napped, and he didn't cry. And he didn't want to leave at the end of the day!

New School

Carter starts his new school the first week of November. We went twice this week for about an hour to get him acclimated, and we'll do the same twice next week. The first day he was very clingy, but the second day was much better. On the first day, we took a bunch of photos, and we looked at them and talked about them before the second day, so I think that helped some.

The school is less than a mile from our house and they serve children 6-weeks through pre-K (state-funded pre-K, I might add). There are three classrooms of Carter's age group, the "older toddlers". He is in the "Rainforest" room with 12 other kids that are anywhere from two months older to six months younger than him. All three of his teachers seem very nice, as do the administrators we have met.

In the reception area, they have a fish tank and a bird, which families can sign up to take home for the weekend. When we got there yesterday, someone had apparently already picked up the bird for the weekend. Carter immediately ran to the empty table where the bird cage usually sits, pointed and started yelling, "Oh no! Oh no!" I expect we'll be taking the bird home for a weekend soon.

The sand table in the classroom

Trying out the pint-sized potty

He loved the rocking horses

And, of course, the playground

Home!

Carter and I arrived home on Friday afternoon. We were originally scheduled to fly back Thursday evening, but I realized that trying to get a 2-year-old, our luggage and a car seat all downtown on Thursday morning was overly ambitious. Changing our flight to Friday allowed us to pack more leisurely and to depart directly from Patrick & Kirstin's place. It also allowed us to have dinner with Cecily, Mark, Allie and Amy.

We managed the commute just fine (thanks, in large part to Kirstin's help and my colleague lending us a stroller), but I would not want to have that long of a commute (1+ hrs each way) on a daily basis.

Carter had a rough time with the daycare the last two days. He was fine the first two days, but I think by the third day he was starting to think this trip to NYC might be permanent, and he communicated his displeasure by being heart-wrenchingly upset at daycare drop off. Therefore, I did what any reasonable mother would do and bought him a delicious cupcake at the end of the last day.

We had a good time, and we are both happy to be home.

First Day in NYC

Carter and I made it safely to NYC last night. It was pretty bumpy on the way in, due to the weather, and we had to take several detours on the way to Patrick & Kirstin's due to flooded streets, but we made it.

Here's Carter on his pint-sized pallet.

Carter (unfortunately) woke up at 6am and wandered around the apartment calling for me. I was sleeping on the bed right next to him; apparently, he didn't look that direction. Even more unfortunately, he didn't go back to sleep afterwards.

This morning, we went to a farm and farmer's market. I didn't get any pictures, but Patrick did, so I'll try to get some from him and post them later.

This afternoon, we played ladder ball in the yard and had dinner with Joo!

Tomorrow is the first of four days that we will brave Manhattan rush hour to get to work and daycare (my company's back up daycare center - near my office). I hope that Carter will be entertained by the train rides (one commuter train and one subway train) and not overwhelmed! It's only been a year since we lived here, but he's a lot more sensitive to his surroundings than he was a year ago!