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...
