Kindergarten orientation
2 years, 8 months By Allyson
In: Children
Wow. Hubbard seems to have a lot of kindergartners this year. They have 7 classes each with I think 18 kids. Which by some school's standards I suppose isn't very much. But for the little town of Hubbard I think it's pretty good.
Orientation went well today. We sat in the auditorium, and got to see all of the kindergarten teachers, as well as the principal, the school nurse, the guidance counselor, the transportation supervisor, the cafeteria supervisor, etc.
From there we found out that Riley's kindergarten teacher is Mrs. Reel. And for some reason I am having the world's most difficult time remembering this lady's name and i have no idea why. Ha ha. She seems quite nice. We got to see her class room. She went over some of the things and learning materials that she will be using through out the year. She also said that by the end of the year the students should be able to write short sentences. Like "The cat is black." I think that is pretty cool. They also said that each day of the week will have a special activity outside of the classroom with Mrs Reel. A day will be dedicated for gym, music, art, library, and a foreign language. Now here is the cool and incredibly awesome part....Hubbard school got a teacher from China to teach mandarin Chinese to the kids! Yay!!!!!!!
For those of you who know me well you know I'm a huge sinophile. And I would be lying if I said the fact that they are teaching Chinese wasn't a factor in why I chose Hubbard school system for my kids. Ha ha. And its even better that she is going to be learning it from someone that Chinese is their first language. I think that's important. The pronunciations come off much better. Although I must admit that I'm incredibly surprised that they've chosen Chinese. It is an incredibly complex language. Most languages all you have to worry about is remembering what word means what. In Chinese each word also has four tones. Depending on the tone you use, you change the meaning of the word. Interestingly enough the Chinese language hasn't always been like that. The addition of the tones was just done within the last 70 to 80 years. I don't know if they ran out of words to use or what. I suppose in a way that makes sense. I mean think about the English language. It is constantly evolving and adding new terms and words derived from other languages and the become a part of everyday vernacular. And because of that, dictionaries keep getting thicker and thicker! Ha.
Well at any rate....Riley had a lot of fun. We not only got to see her classroom, and see things that she will be doing, we also got a tour of the building. Though they didn't really show us things like, this is the entrance that you drop them off at in the morning. All I know is she is supposed to either go into the cafeteria for her breakfast, or she goes to the gymnasium to wait for her class to start. And she will be ushered to the proper location at the proper times as needed.
Interestingly there was a huge difference between Riley and the other children going into kindergarten size-wise. Riley looked like an amazon. I only saw two other children that were anywhere near her height. And neither of them are in her classroom. The other kids in her class looked so tiny in comparison to her. Honest to God she was their size at 3! I don't know why I never noticed this at her daycare. Unless I just figured its because most of them weren't in her age group or something.
Other differences I noticed was that the other kids were constantly calling on mom to come over and help them with this that or the other thing. Riley sat down quietly at the table got out the crayons the teacher had provided and began coloring the paper that had been laid out for her. The other kids were not in the lines, hers was perfectly in the lines. The colors carefully chosen for each thing on hers, while the others were all odd colors.
I'm starting to see more now why people keep thinking Riley is older. This part was hard, because when we went to the play room for drinks and refreshments the other kids just kind of kept to themselves. Even though Riley tried talking to them they shied away from her a bit. I'm hoping that won't be the case the whole year.
We found out we live too close to the school, and there are no school buses that come down our street. So Riley will be a walker when she's old enough to walk by herself. In the mean time, Thom and I will be driving her to and from school. This was incredibly disappointing to Riley. And then they had a bus sitting out there for the kids to get on and take a look at, and Riley thought we were going somewhere right then - not just looking. So that was disappointing to her too. I told her don't worry. Even though you don't get to ride one every day, you will still get to on days that you guys go on field trips. So that helped cheer her up a bit
Later we went and got her a pair of everyday shoes, and a pair of tennis shoes, and good God I spent 30 bucks on them. And they were buy one get one half off! She is in between a 12 1/2 and a 13 size shoe. She's just big all over!
So, tonight she went to spend the night at Grandma Hibbard's house. Tomorrow we'll be picking her up and taking her to get her hair cut. She has decided she doesn't want long hair anymore. And being the encouraging mommy that I am, I am respecting her decision and saying to myself quietly, hair grows back.
So how am I doing with this whole my baby is going into kindergarten thing? Well, I'll be honest I would probably be a wreck right now if I didn't have a baby Leonard who is still a baby. But I'm also kind of looking forward to the idea that I get to put him into kindergarten too. This really is exciting and it's so cool to see all the things she's going to learn and do. I'm excited for Riley and I'm proud of her.
And how about there are a bunch of kids named Riley! I think Riley is the only girl Riley. In her class there is a boy named Rylee Hacker. So the teacher was kind of scratching her head trying to figure out how she was going to differentiate between the two of them since they are both Riley H. or Rylee H. We also saw that in one or two of the other classrooms there were Rylee or Rylie as well. Again, boys. Weird huh?
Well, that's all I've got for tonight. Hope you guys are having a great weekend. I'm going to get my daughter's hair cut tomorrow. It's not going to be long. And I'm going to be fine with that....really. Sigh.
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