the first day of school: kindergarten

Our oldest child started kindergarten today! He was so excited. It made me laugh...I had told him I set his alarm at 6:50 AM and that he could hit snooze once or twice, but soon after 7:00 AM I would come in, and then it would be time to get up & get ready for the day. Well, I heard the alarm go off, and not five minutes later Ben appeared, fully dressed and beaming from ear to ear. Quite a contrast to the way I've had to work to get him out of bed the last two years. Let us hope this refreshing new trend continues.

Benjamin attends at Montessori school. It does a 3-year program: two years of "preschool" and then kindergarten, all in the same classroom. So the 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds are all in the same class. The older children help the younger children, and the younger children can watch those big kids and see what they'll be learning someday. I think it really works, and Ben and I are both so excited that this year he'll be one of the big kids.

So, armed with a lunch he'd prepared himself, wearing a new shirt bought especially for this day, and eager to be back in his classroom, my boy went happily to kindergarten. No one cried, not even me. In a lot of ways this feels just like what we've done the past two years. I'll bet next year will wrench my heart a bit, though. Then he'll be starting a new school and making new friends.

I know it's unorthodox, but in Ben's Montessori school the kindergartners need to be at school for a full day: from 8:30 to 3:00. It feels so strange to have my firstborn gone for so much of the day! But he was thrilled. He's been campaigning to be a "three o'clocker" for a long time now. And now his moment has arrived!