Back To School Night

So, all the literature about BTS Night mentioned taking the bus from the local library to the school. I could totally understand this because we’d been at the school and there really isn’t much parking (well, at least not for back-to-school type numbers of people). A last-minute email also mentioned available parking at a nearby church and grocery store, but I googled, and it still appeared to be about a mile walk…? (Unless there were hidden walking paths through the trees that didn’t show up.) I figured there would be street parking since it is a neighborhood, but I couldn’t imagine that many people trying to park on the streets…so I just figured the library bus was the best (most popular?) option. I even envisioned two or three buses to take the hoards of people. Besides, we knew both kids would LOVE riding the bus (Katie is infatuated with school buses).

Katie: SCHOOL BUS! SCHOOL BUS!
Owen: C’MON! LET’S GO!!

So we get there and…where are the throngs of people? Where’s the bus(es)? Well, we were 10 minutes early, but still. So the bus arrives at 3:55 and we pull out about 4:05 and there was a grand total of about 20 people on the bus. Huh? I was intrigued—I couldn’t wait to see how many people were actually at the event AND see where they were parking. Yeahhhh…turns out all the surrounding streets were PACKED. (That said, next year? We’re driving. Three hours was TOO long.) But there were lots of people there!

My first thoughts?

It was a madhouse. The kindergarten rooms are fairly big, but add in two parents for most of the kids and other siblings…all trying to talk to the teacher and fill out forms at kid-sized tables. EGADS.

What a melting pot. I honestly think Caucasian is the minority here. I have no problems with that—it’s just an observation. Just look at this class list (last names obviously obscured), keeping in mind that some of the more Americanized names are…not:

Other random things:

Owen was—SURPRISE!—super shy. He didn’t want to go look for his name and was glued to my side. However, he did go with the teacher when she invited him to come look for his number and cubby.

Owen’s teacher is a tiny thing and when they were standing next to each other, I just kinda went HOLY CRAP THEY’RE CLOSE IN SIZE!! I didn’t get a picture, but I’m sure I will eventually. I didn’t immediately LOVE her…but anyone trying to live up to Miss Ashley is going to have a hard time. 🙂 I look forward to getting to know her. She had a few old students come in to say hi, and in briefly chatting with the parents, I could see she is obviously well-liked.

We discovered that one classmate lives in our neighborhood—they recognized us from the pool—so that’s cool. It was so busy I didn’t get a chance to talk to her, but I’m hoping we’ll see them at the pool party this weekend.

So, then the teacher gave a presentation which was fine…except Katie threw a fit during it because she wanted to play with the baby (another person’s actual baby!) and we wouldn’t let her. The teacher heard me saying “No, you can’t play with the baby” and took a moment to stop and ask if I meant the toy doll that was just out of reach and when I said “No, the real baby” the entire room laughed. 🙂 So Tom had her in the hall for the rest of the time.

She said their class has a late lunch this year—1:30! So, snack time will be in the morning instead of the afternoon. (And we have to use a special bag to send in their snack every day. Lordy. I’m sure they know it works, but what a pain.) Another new thing is no mats for rest time—it is just considered Quiet Time for reading or something quiet at your desk. The kids all got name/room stickers to wear the first week so people can help guide them to where they need to be—they have safety patrols out at the buses (older kids, I’m guessing, from those I saw wearing reflective-wear today).

We only had about an hour in the classroom, and it wasn’t long enough because everyone wanted to talk to the teacher (as expected). We could have easily used at least another half hour. Really though, there wasn’t much else (for us) to do. They had a table set up in the cafeteria with info on the school lunch program and you could add money to their account (which long story short, they assigned a SIX-DIGIT number for Owen to memorize to use his lunch account and I was all REALLY? FOR KINDERGARTENERS? so she let me pick a 3-digit number)—and the gym had a few things like Scouts and PTO—but by the time we got done with the extra time in Owen’s classroom, it was time for pizza (Owen ate FOUR slices!) and then we just kind of wandered around. We did get Owen a school shirt, though.

And even then, we still had almost 45 minutes to waste before the bus took us back to the library. So we went out to the playground.

I was stunned that THAT was the entire playground area. Granted, they do have a huge paved basketball court and some soccer fields, but for an actual playground area it still seemed SMALL. So imagine my surprise when, as we were leaving, we went past the kindergarten classroom area and saw another SMALLER playground area. Hoo boy. I’m hoping that’s actually for the Pre-K classes so we’ll see.

Overall, it was fine. Katie was a bit of a mess on and off but she didn’t do too badly. Owen wanted to go home about 30 minutes in but then he rallied.

I just can’t believe HE STARTS SCHOOL IN FIVE DAYS. The worst part, I think, will be me not being able to take pictures…and Katie going through Owee withdrawal.