Look Out World, Here I Come!

I have a kindergartner! While I am excited for her to start this new adventure (and it certainly has been an adventurous first 1 1/2 weeks), I am a little sad that my little girl is old enough for school. Sophia started out the year with Mr. Cooke. She seemed to adjust well, liked her teacher and talked about friends in class. In fact, she informed us on the first day that she had to move spots for talking to someone when Mr. Cooke was talking. Our little girl? Never! We soon learned that her schedule wasn't quite what we had anticipated. In talking about her second day (talking might not be the best word, since I have to pry everything out of her when we get home), I learned that she was sitting through a second lunch, story and circle time each day at the Y. This was not ok with me so I quickly e-mailed the principal and the next day we enrolled her in full-day kindergarten. Sophia (and Erik and me) would have loved to stay with Mr. Cooke for the rest of the year, but Sophia's time in the morning wouldn't have been spent very well.

But there's more-After changing to full-day kindergarten, it was now possible for her to take the bus on the days Erik had planned to drop her off at the Y. This Tuesday was her first day. Sophia has wanted to ride the bus for a long time so this was a big day for her. Erik walked her to the bus stop but then left her with the neighbor to run back and get the camera. While he was gone, the bus came. Poor Sophia didn't get to say goodbye to her dad. This led to tears and a trip to the office. From what I understand, they had trouble calming her down and they eventually called Erik to talk to her. So much for a positive first experience on the bus.

And more-Sophia made a second trip to the social worker yesterday because she was crying at the beginning of the day again. When I picked her up at the end of the day, I wanted to ask her about this and said, "Sophia, what happened today?" Imagine my shock when her reply was, "I had to go to the principal's office." Well, it turned out to be the social worker's office (again) because she had kicked and pushed someone in the hallway-just what we wanted to hear, especially since we were meeting her teacher for a listening conference that night. Unfortunately, Sophia tends to be a follower at times and if someone tells her to do something, she does it. We ran into this problem at daycare and it looks like it's happening again. We had a long talk last night and today I was very proud of her. Not only did she have a no-cry day, she told her teacher her plan this morning and played with different kids today. My fingers are crossed that things will start to go more smoothly. She loves learning, loved preschool and I have a feeling that kindergarten will be no different.