New Schools

Matthew on his first day of kindergarten

Matthew is a kindergartner now! He joined the ranks of Ms Marilyn's Room 4 at El Carmelo Elementary School.  His first day was August 16th and we were happy to have my parents in attendance for the great event.  From a demographic perspective El Carmelo is an interesting place. My best guess is that at least 50% of the parents were born outside of the USA and/or are not of European descent. There is at least one child in every room who has not learned English yet.  There are visiting scholars, tech folks and plenty that came to work for start ups. Regardless of where people started out, there was something in the water in 2006/2007 because all 3 kindergarten classes contain 15 boys and 7 girls.

So far we're happy with what we see.   Matthew comes home with projects he's proud to show and seems to be integrating well into his class room.  He did draw the least cuddly of the available kindergarten teachers.  This hasn't necessarily been a bad thing as Ms Marilyn's direct communication style and smoothly functioning classroom is comfortable for him. One of our neighbors is an aid in his classroom and that has helped him feel at home. I will start as an art volunteer in a few weeks and look forward to seeing his classroom in action.

Owen on his first day of at Trinity Preschool

Thank goodness Owen's preschool class has started! Every morning for the last 2 weeks Owen has tearfully accompanied Matthew to El Carmelo, pleading to be taken to his own school. He even insisted on wearing his backpack and bringing his water bottle. On his first day of school, Owen climbed into the car and buckled himself in 10 minutes before we needed to go in the hopes his parents would get the idea and just take him to school already. He is attending a far more traditional school than Matthew's. Owen has a uniform and I have yet to see crocs or light up sneakers on any of the children there.

From the parental standpoint, we have plunged into the world of dueling back to school nights, BBQs and picnics, volunteer forms and donation requests. The PTA, TPA, PIE and AYSO are among the new acronyms in our lives. Our weekends have gone from aimless to over scheduled. I have a hard time imagining how this all could have worked in world without Google Calendar.....