Kindergarten!

Well, this isn't the longest gap of time since I have posted...but it certainly has been a while.

Anyway... Spencer started kindergarten at our local public school, Idlewood Elementary in August. It has been a busy few months of school. We have had 2 field trips, a kindergarten class performance, a book fair, a book character costume parade, a pajama day, a fall festival, a PTA meeting, and I'm sure other things I'm not remembering. Spencer is enjoying school and has a fantastic teacher.  A lot of what he is doing in kindergarten is review from last year (kudos to his preK teacher!), and he is now doing 'advanced' homework that his kindergarten teacher sends home for a few kids in the class who are beyond the current material. He is also already at the reading level that they want the kindergarteners to be at by the end of the year. Yes, I am bragging but I figure that's my right as a parent :-) (And I try not to do it too much or too often.) On the less brag-worthy side of things there have been a few behavioral incidents (the most recent was because he was not listening and was laughing at the teacher when she asked him to do something or reprimanded him...that resulted in the teacher actually walking him to the car at after school pick up so she could talk to my mother-in-law about Spencer's behavior).

Spencer dressed up as his favorite book character, Jack from the Magic Tree House books, with his teacher at the book character parade

We walk to school every morning. Between Fred and I (and once our neighbor when we went out of town) Spencer has been walked to school every single day of school so far this year. I love that we live so close that we can walk. We started out walking with 3 other neighborhood families, but families slowly started to drop out of our walking group. We now walk regularly with one other mom and her son, though several mornings it has just been Spencer and I. I hope to keep up our walking streak throughout the winter...except in the case of rain (I'm not quite that hard core).

 Overall we have been really happy with Spencer's school. It's a large elementary school with ~900 students (~120 in kindergarten). It is a Title I school, which means over 60% of the students qualify for free or reduced price lunch and therefore the school qualifies for special assistance and takes part in special programs aimed at ensuring 'that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments'. So, basically it's a low income school. It is ethnically (though not necessarily racially) diverse with students from various countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. There is a high percentage of families that don't speak English, which is one of the school's biggest challenges (especially since there is not a common non-English language spoken by families). Spencer is the only white kid in his class (and one of 5 white kids in kindergarten). I love it, and he hasn't noticed :-) Many of the more affluent families in our neighborhood take their kids to other schools, usually schools in wealthier areas north of our community. There are so many benefits of going to our neighborhood school. I'm so glad we decided to give Idlewood a chance.

Oh, I almost forgot...Spencer also lost his first tooth! It happened so fast...I was brushing his teeth on Sunday night and it was very loose (so loose that it alarmed me! I wasn't expecting it) and the next day it fell out while he was eating lunch at school. They sent it home with a cute little certificate and the tooth fairy left him 4 quarters.

Not a bicycle riding prodigy

A few weeks ago a friend/classmate of Spencer's (we'll call him 'T') told his mom he wanted to do bicycle riding as his sport. So T's mom organized a series of bike riding playdates with friends at a local middle school track.

We were the first to arrive at one of the playdates. We got Spencer's little kid bike (with training wheels) out of the car. We fastened his Cars themed helmet, and away he went down the track. V e r y s l o w l y. There was just enough light breeze to keep him from making forward progress. But it was a flat, smooth surface so with a little coaxing and pushing now and then he made it around the track in nothing near record time. But he made it.

Then Spencer's friend T arrives. It took me a moment to recognize T, since from a distance all I saw were 2 adult bicycles. I was wondering where T's bike was. As they approached, I realized T was actually on one of the adult sized bicycles. Now, mind you, T is a little guy. A few inches and a few months behind Spencer. But T came flying around the track on his bicycle, no training wheels, real helment (sans cartoon characters), and flew around the track in near record speed. T's mom saw the look on my face as I watched her bicycle riding prodigy ride laps around poor Spencer, pedaling his heart out trying to go forward against the light breeze, looking so...young...compared to his peer. She helpfully offered that T's older cousins do a lot of bike riding and T had spent time with them and learned from them. I'm not sure if that made me feel any better.

Spencer was done after 1.5 laps, and quickly got distracted by a dog. We'll be at the next bicycle riding playdate...I'm hoping that eventually some of T's bicycle riding enthusiasm and skills will rub off on Spencer.