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For my journal:
Tomorrow is Duncan’s first day of kindergarten. He turned 5 1/2 years old last week. He is not nearly as emotively expressive as his older sister, but I think he’s quietly excited. Not that he’s quiet–this is hard to explain. I was trying to mark the occasion and make it special. We had pie and said several rounds of “hip-hip-hooray for Duncan’s first day!” He was very loud. When I say he’s quiet about it, I mean that he doesn’t talk about how he feels about kindergarten much. People ask him if he’s excited and he says, “yeah” with a little smile and then turns away from them.
Duncan and Amelia, August 2009
In preparation for the grand day tomorrow he picked out a green sweater he feels handsome in and asked me about soccer: “Amy [the pet name Amelia insists he and no one else call her] says that all the boys at my school play soccer. Do you think that’s true?” [I don't think Amelia was trying to make him feel negatively about his school; she thought her observation might help him to keep playing soccer].
[And then, because he doesn't like soccer:] “Mom, do they have any trees in the yard at my school?” “Yes, Duncan, they do,” I said. “Do you think a boy can ever just sit under a tree?”
With no prior prodding or interrogation on my part, Duncan told me today what he wants to be when he grows up. He told me he had four ideas, but he could only remember three of them: 1)Train Engineer, 2) Artist, 3) or a Person Who Makes Cool Stuff.
Meanwhile, Amelia has already started at her new school. So far, she seems to love it. Her 5th grade teacher is “her favorite so far.” The homework load at this school is a bit terrifying for the parent of a daughter who will allow any task to expand to fill all available time (plus more), but five days into it, Amelia herself seems to be enjoying the challenge. I hope that will remain true in the months ahead.
Pdad gave her the standard “a new school offers the chance to be a new person” spiel. I was a little hesitant because I didn’t want her to think we weren’t happy with the person she was before. But his spiel was aimed squarely at her stalwart dress-wearing ways. Amelia has consistently worn dresses daily [except under duress] since the beginning of first grade. She gets quite a bit of attention for that from her peers, as you might imagine. Since she reacted with disdain to the idea of buying some pants for school, I figured she had chosen to travel the same path as before: soft cotton one-piece dresses with no buttons or zippers, difficult fasteners, or offensive textures of any kind. It’s not so terrible! If her clothing choices make her odd, they also make her modest, feminine, and age-appropriate. How much can a parent complain under such circumstances?
But look what I saw when I asked her to lay out her clothes for the first week of school:
Change–”Ready or not, here we come!”
Comments
3 Responses to “Milestones: K-garten and 5th Grade”
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I love the tie-dye with the plaid. That’s classy.
I wish I could get my girls to wear more dresses to school, but I think they discourage it at our school. For one thing, they have the kids from third grade up run laps around the field every day, which I think is great for their health, but bad for their fashion. They have to wear running shoes everyday and you don’t want to dress them in something too cute that couldn’t handle the activity. No cute shoes or boots! For another, what do you do about the hanging-upside-down-on-the-playground thing while wearing a dress? Does she wear shorts underneath? Or is she just not a hanging-upside-down kind of girl?
Such cute kids. I have a daughter starting kindergarten this year. I am anxious to hear how the sitting under a treeand non-dress wearing goes.
Robin–Yes, Amelia has often worn running shoes with her dresses and it is not the most coordinated look. It does work better with the demands of PE though. She isn’t really the hanging upside down type of girl, but nonetheless the modesty issue has come up a lot. Her dresses are long enough, but it turns out that knowing how to sit properly in a dress is very much a learned behavior. I have been surprised how many reminders are required. How did people teach this to girls when dress wearing was the norm? I think skorts are a wonderful solution, but Amelia believes them to be an abomination.
angela–I just asked Duncan and he told me that the part of the playground where the kindergarteners go to play has no trees! I guess he will have to look forward to second grade!