Tales from school

It was SO nice to get the kids back to school yesterday.

Because of the Veterans’ Day holiday, and a teacher inservice day, Tad had both Monday and Tuesday off. Ane, of course, doesn’t have school until Wednesday anyway, so we had two days of no school (except for Ane’s ballet class).

They. Drove. Me. NUTS.

I was actually looking forward to the couple of mornings of sleeping in and not having to hurry off somewhere at the crack of dawn. However, the kids have forgotten what “sleeping in” is… unless it’s Sunday. So I was being joined in bed by the kids in the morning, which guaranteed that I wasn’t getting any more sleep. And then they were just bored all day. They wanted to be in school. They wanted their routine back.

I had no idea how dependent I’d become on their being in school – or how happy I would be to send them back.

Yesterday was my “parent volunteer” hour in Ane’s class. In an interesting twist, she was actually really pleased that I was coming, instead of not wanting me there at all. When my hour was over, she wanted me to stay – but I had to go pick up Tad from school. The timing is perfect – her first hour of school is from 9 to 10, and Tad gets out at 10:30.

Ane and I were right on time for school and she immediately started showing me the new “store” in her classroom. The teacher has transformed the kitchen play area into a grocery store, and asked all the kids to bring in canned and boxed goods to put in the store. There are two toy cash registers and play money, and a toy shopping cart. The kids absolutely love playing in there, and at the end of the month, all the food in the “store” will be donated to a local food bank.

One of the other little girls in the class, who is a friend of Ane’s, came up to me as I was watching Ane play at the store. “Hi. You’re Ane’s mom, aren’t you? Are you volunteering today in our class?”

When I replied that I was, she said, “My dad is going to volunteer on Friday. He was going to come in today, but you signed up first.”

Thank you. It’s nice to be here.

I told her dad what she had said later, as we were all waiting for the kids after school. He sighed. “That sounds like her.”

After my hour with Ane, I zipped over to Tad’s school and was there in plenty of time. I was actually waiting for him when he walked out, and his face just lit up as he ran to me. There was one other adult waiting with me for Tad’s class – she is an au pair to one of the boys in the class. As I hugged Tad, his teacher said to the au pair about the boy she was picking up, “He doesn’t have a ‘good day’ hand stamp today. He pushed another student while they were waiting in line, so we had to have a talk about it.”

When the teacher finished, and as the au pair collected her charge, a little boy standing next to the teacher piped up and said, “It was ME!”

I stifled a giggle as the teacher rolled her eyes. The au pair smiled and said to the little boy, “Well, I’m sure he’s sorry and won’t do it again.”

And yes, Tad had a “good day” stamp on his hand. It’s always good to get back to school.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 1:09 am and is filed under Children, School Days.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed and Both comments and pings are currently closed.