First day of Kindergarten

Sean was so excited to start at his new school.

They took name tag pictures for his English class and his Chinese. I should have taken the picture at the same time as the volunteer but didn't. I made him get in front of the tree so a I could take his picture after the fact. I knew if I asked him to put the Chinese hat on again so I could take that picture he'd put his foot down.

I am amazed at how quiet they are at school. At the Montessori school a class of 12 sounded like 50. At Stewart a class of 30 is very quiet. If all 750 kids were as loud as the kids at the Montessori school the noise would be deafening.

Watching the kids made me laugh. I've been teaching adults for 20 years. Every class has the same "roles", the know it all, the I have a story for that, the I'm not going to listen to the teacher because I'm busy talking to the person next to me, the fidgety one, the sleeper, the class clown and the shy one. The texters and game players were missing because a five year old don't have cell phones. (or if they do they aren't allowed to bring them to class.) I was watching the kids and I could identify their adult roles. Little miss know it all was seriously getting on my nerves. She really did "know it all" and wanted to make sure everyone knew. She will be a cheerleader and I look forward to her Valedictorian talk in high school. Sean is really shy at school. The teacher asked if anyone had ever seen a monkey outside of the zoo. I asked Sean why he didn't tell them he had and he said "I'm not going to raise my hand and talk."

Moving on to Chinese class. The way the program works is the kids go to English kindergarten for an hour and a half, then lunch followed by two and a half hours of Chinese. The teacher doesn't speak any English. She gestures and jumps around a lot. Here she is telling them the story of the three little pigs in Chinese. At least I think that's what she was doing. There was a lot of huffing and puffing and blowing things down. The kids were staring at her with their mouths open (including Miss know it all.) I was overwhelmed and I'm not the one who has to learn Chinese.

As the kids were dismissed from English class on the first day they had to come up one by one before they were dismissed and the class sang a song "we are so glad you are here....." Sean was the second one to get called up so he had to stand in front of everyone. He did not like that at all. He asked "why did they do that?" Not cool, not cool at all.