Our First (and almost last) Day of Kindergarten

I promised real so I wanted to share the story of our first day of kindergarten. I first shared this last year on Facebook and the response was what pushed me to finally make this blog…. even if only my friends and family are visiting. 🙂

July 31, 2019

Yesterday was our “First Day of Kindergarten.” I finally had a schedule that was going to work for us. I wanted it to be magical. I wanted her to love it so much that she didn’t feel like she is missing out not going to “real school.” We picked out her favorite dress, did her hair with her favorite bow and I strategically picked the place I wanted to take her first day of kindergarten photo… the same bridge where my senior pictures were taken. It did not go well! Her younger brother was supposed to be wading in the creek and I told him just to get his shoes wet because he wouldn’t be able to go on the slide later if he had wet pants. I tried to get her to smile “naturally” for the picture. This was a special picture. I mean this was THE first day of kindergarten photo! I was excited. I felt like a good mom. This was going to be awesome… school at the creek.

Then my boss texted and needed something pretty urgently. I knew we had to hurry. My daughter wouldn’t stand up straight. She wouldn’t stop touching the water and then her wet fingers smeared the sign before I could get a good picture. We were in a hurry and I couldn’t even get the picture checked off my list, let alone any learning. I turned around to find her brother with his shoes off and pants off in the creek! That’s the opposite of what I said. I got really frustrated. I did not handle this combination of events well at all. I was clearly frustrated. She was upset that I was frustrated. I couldn’t let him stand in the creek in his underwear so I decided we had to leave. She was disheartened of course. He was upset. We drove back home on high emotion to regroup. I cried. My daughter cried. I felt like such an incredible failure and I was… It was really bad. I felt like I had ruined her first day of kindergarten. If she was in school and her teacher had acted the way I did, I would’ve been so upset. My first reaction was I can’t do this. If I can’t handle this, she’d be better off in public school. It starts this Friday. I’ll call and get her in and I’ll go to work full time so she only has to see me a couple hours a day. She’d be better off with someone else as her teacher. I almost picked up the phone.

BUT THEN…. After emotions calmed down, we played Sum Swamp and laughed. She was doing an amazing job adding and subtracting in her head without her fingers! We had lunch and I read Ice Cream from Frog and Toad All Year. Both of my kids were engaged. She summarized the story and I wrote it down. Then we ate fudge bars outside together. She dripped it on her favorite dress and said she was just like Toad in the story. We decided to go back to the creek for a do over. We went back to the creek without the pressure we first went with. I had no urgent work project. I wasn’t even going to try and take a picture. This was a redemption mission. I only wanted my kids to enjoy themselves. A bug flew in the van and she asked for the insect field guide because she wanted to try and identify it from memory.I didn’t care if he got wet this time. In fact, I wanted him to go for it and he definitely did! We practiced writing our numbers on rocks around the creek with chalk. When we were almost done playing, she, unprompted, sat down under the bridge and got the 1st Day of Kindergarten sign back out of my backpack and sat down and posed for a picture.We played! We had fun! We learned! The difference was night and day.

I’m reframing the way I look at things. A big part of why I am homeschooling is in an attempt to preserve childhood for a few more years. My first method would not have done that! I could keep kicking myself for the way the morning went or I could learn from it and look forward. I’m deleting that first picture I took with her perfect bow and perfectly clean dress with the bridge strategically placed in the background and I’m going to cherish the second picture that she WANTED me to take… bow long gone from playing hard, sandy beach shoes, ice cream stains, smudge from the wet fingers she got from finding a “seashell” in the creek she couldn’t wait to pick up, and a REAL GENUINE smile.

I learned a lot of things yesterday. I decided to let my boss know that between 10 and 1, I won’t be available because I’m homeschooling at those times. I CAN do this and you can too. <3