Nursery school report.

[rivka]

You were right. Alex was fine. Her only tears of the morning came when I put sunscreen on her before we left.

As we wheeled the stroller out of the house, she said excitedly, "I'm going to have a CUBBY!" I'm not sure why that was the pinnacle of nursery school anticipation, but obviously we weren't going to argue.

We took a couple of pictures in the alley behind the church:





She picked out that backpack herself, and is very excited to have a backpack of her own, "just the right size for me." She's never seen Thomas the Tank Engine, so to her it's just a backpack with a picture of a train.

We went in to her classroom. Within about two seconds, she was hard at work at the Play-Doh table.





There were three other little girls already there, and one teacher. I think that they were expecting two more kids and one more teacher for the day. New kids will be added to the class gradually - right now, her future classmates haven't all turned two yet. Ultimately, the class will be reasonably balanced between boys and girls.

Michael and I stayed for about fifteen minutes. Alex played with Play-Doh for a while. A couple of the other little girls got interested in a toy farm, and Alex went over to investigate the bin of animals that they were unpacking. She lined some animals up on a table. Then she drifted back to the Play-Doh. Michael and I wandered around the room checking out all of the toys: a book corner, a very nice play kitchen, a bookcase full of big trucks and cars, a dress-up box, some building toys (blocks and duplos), a dollhouse, a big toy barn and a couple of bins of realistically detailed plastic animals (farm and wild)... pretty much all the greatest hits of what Alex likes to play with.

Eventually it became obvious that we weren't needed. I knelt down by Alex and explained that we were going to leave, and would pick her up later when nursery school was all done. She had just a moment of... concern, I guess - a sort of a whimper and a worried look. I gave her a big hug. By the time that Michael knelt down to get his hug, she was already reaching for a rhythm shaker she'd seen on the shelf behind her. We slipped out the door while Alex and her teacher were exploring the shaker together.

We hung out in the hall for about five minutes, chatting with the director. I asked her to peek in the classroom and make sure that Alex was okay. She came back with the report that Alex was happily playing in the kitchen area, and so we left. We went to a cafe and held each others' hands and reassured each other that everything would be Just Fine.

In about an hour we'll pick her up. Starting next week, she'll be going for three full days a week - but the director recommended half-days the first week, and that made sense to us.

She was totally ready for this.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

It's practically an iconic first-day-of-school photo. A keeper, for sure.