First Day Of Kindergarten

Big day for Hanky. It went well from what we can tell, though he doesn't really want to talk about it in much detail. It started out a little frazzled for me because we ended up running a little late. I didn't allow enough time for Henry to brush his teeth, forgetting how much he can dilly dally in the bathroom. I still thought we were OK on time until we hit the traffic lineup to get into school. My car showing that it was completely out of gas did not help my state of mind. It took forever to get in, and we walked into his classroom a few minutes late, which was no big deal, but I felt stupid. All the frazzledness kind of prevented me from getting too emotional about it all. I was nervous about stupid little procedural things, like if I was supposed to walk him all the way to his room or not, and how picking him up would work exactly. I'd gotten a little wistful about it the night before, so maybe I got it out of my system. I was mostly just nervous for him, hoping it would go fine and that the Spanish immersion thing doesn't throw him for a loop too much at the beginning.

His school day is only 2.5 hours long, so after Franny and I went to Target and watched Sesame Street, it was pretty much already time to pick him up. He told me had a good day and that he didn't use any of his school supplies. Trying to piece together his day, I know that the first thing he did was color this:

Then his teacher, Senorita Morsch, did a lesson that involved a calendar (perhaps going through the names of the days of the week), and drew a one on the board and said, "uno." Then they lined up, washed their hands, and played on the playground. I think a playground assistant went through the rules with them, because he said there are a lot of rules on the playground. And he can't remember what he did between the playground and me coming to get him. I asked if he had fun, and he said, "I wouldn't exactly call it fun, but it was OK."

He had a bit of homework in which he had to reflect on his first day by filling in some blanks. Here are his answers, in bold:

Today was my first day of school. I felt great. I wore gray pants and a colorful, plaid button-up. My dad brought me to school. My teachers name is Srta Morsch. My friend _____ is in my class (he doesn't know anybody in his class yet). The first thing we did was color. Then we watched a screen. The part of the day I liked the best was when we played on the playground but I did not like standing up. Tomorrow I hope we will play on the playground again.