Kindergarten Chronicles- Episode 1

First Published September 2009

So as you probably know I am teaching Kindergarten for the first time in over 20 years. At the same time Charlotte is embarking on her public school career in Kindergarten at our neighborhood school. So I am starting an occasional series called Kindergarten Chronicles. Let me know what you think.
8/31/0
Adam took Charlotte to her 1st day of school and drop off went well. She drew a picture of her 1st day and wrote her name on the back. She told Adam that she looked on her name tag to see how to write the letters of her name. :)
My day was more hectic. I had students coming and going. I lost 3 students when I told them to follow me to the K play yard which is by my room but not adjacent to it. It is probably 20 feet away. These students followed another class out to the primary playground. Then upon locating lost students it dawns on me that I forgot to tell my students to get their snacks so I had to line them up to get their snacks out of their backpacks. Time remaining for teacher to pee- 1 minute. Then at lunch time some students went home. Some went to daycare. Some bought lunch, and the remaining students were to eat their lunches from home at the picnic tables in the K play yard. One student forgot he was buying, one student forgot he was going to daycare and one did not get picked up. Afternoon went much better ;) No lost children and all got picked up.

9/1/09 & 9/2/09- I am feeling better about my class and I guess Charlotte is feeling better about her class too because she had timeouts on both days. And people ask me why Charlotte isn't at my school.

9/3/09
As we are returning from recess one of my boys says " Some girl bumped into me." My reply "OK. Thanks for letting me know." Then I notice what I think is dirt on his forehead. I ask him to come over to me again. It is then that I see a pretty good sized goose egg on his noggin. I asked a parent was dropping off her child to take battered and bruised boy to the office. I hear later that the child was very upset and couldn't even get the words out. I think he had post traumatic stress syndrome because when he told me about the incident he was pretty calm. Suffice to say his dad picked him up and took him home but not before saying good bye to me. How sweet is that?
Later today I'm telling a story to my Kindergartners and I kid you not two students who are sitting side by side are digging for gold. I didn't want to embarrass them by saying "Don't pick your nose in class." So instead I said "Let's all sit Crisscross Applesauce with our hands in our laps." Who knew the reason that teachers tell students to put their hands in their laps is so their fingers stay out of their noses?

9/4/09
Today When I was seated and in the middle of reading a story to the class, a boy comes up to me, taps me on the shoulder and asks if he can get a drink of water. I calmly tell him to sit down and wait for recess because we are in the middle of a story. Said child leaves my side and walks over to the drinking fountain. At this point I raise my voice a little and tell him that if he does get a drink of water he will have a time out. What happened next shouldn't surprise me because I have 5 year old of my own whose favorite saying is "I can do whatever I want to." Well you probably guessed it, he got a drink of water. So I gave him a time out. After about 5 minutes, I ask him if he is ready to join us. His reply "No."