I was lucky enough to get to go on a hike with the entire kindergarten class today. It took some coordination with a friend because Eve (and all other siblings) were not invited. My friend’s son is in Lex’s class and her daughter is Eve’s age so we shared a babysitter. This week at her house and next week, when the K class has another activity, we have a shared babysitter at my house. It works out really well!

The hike was fun. Each adult got a few students to be in charge of and we walked up the mountain and back down. The whole thing was maybe 40 minutes, not too bad, and the kids had a great time.

Posed smile

Real smile!

Lex’s school is celebrating “Screen Turn Off Week” this week. They kicked off the celebration on Friday night with a fun event at school called Brain-o-mania! Lex came home with a paper “brain” hat and they have been talking all week about fun things to do that stimulate the brain. At the Brain-o-mania event they had all sorts of activities set up throughout the school. Arts and crafts, balls and games in the gym, robotics, puzzles and games, challenges, and even real brains! Local college students apparently bring over human and sheep brains every year and the kids can touch them! Lex was talking about that all week and super excited, but when we finally made it to that room at the end of the evening they were out of rubber gloves and Lex seemed to have lost interest anyway. He took a quick glance at the brains then moved on to a build-a-brain 3D puzzle. It was a really fun night and my only complaint, if you can even call it that, is that there was so much to do and not nearly enough time. I felt like I was rushing the kids through the whole place trying to see it all. In the last room we made it to I was talking to a teacher who said that they do basically the same things every year so the kids start to know what to expect and are able to plan their time accordingly. I guess it’s just us kindergarten parents who are still feeling harried :) It was fun though and I’m glad Lex was excited to go. He really loved the robotics stuff and both kids spent a lot of time in the arts and crafts room.

The kids, and a classmate, watching the robotics demonstration. Alan and Lex probably would have spent the entire time here if I'd let them.

Eve in the arts and crafts room.

Hard at work making sculptures out of recycled stuff.

Our last stop of the evening. They drew flags to add to a banner to be delivered to a Ugandan school that the town has a relationship with.

This week they are earning prizes for amount of time spent reading (Lex is leading his class so far!) and doing lots of other fun activities. Last Saturday I saw a URL in a magazine for a neat looking website (nutrition related) and I asked the kids if they wanted to play with it for a bit. Eve jumped at the idea, but Lex said, “Remember Mom, it’s screen turn off week. I’ll just play with my toys instead.”  So we left the screen off.   :)

We may have begun a new experience in this wonderful world of parenting. Poor Lex, my trailblazer, always gets it first.

He’s been asking me to pick him up after school a lot lately, instead of taking the bus home. Not insisting, but asking. He settled on a once-a-week pick up and tells me almost daily that the day I pick him up from school is his favorite day. It’s so hard to tell with kids though. Once they go to school and spend all day with people you only sort of know… it’s just hard to tell what’s going on.

Anyway, he got off the bus yesterday very flustered and flushed. His coat was half off, his bag zippers open, the bag itself covered in dust. I immediately knew something was wrong and before I could even ask he started telling me that a kid he sat with was bugging him. Apparently this boy was pushing him, and took his backpack and threw it on the floor, and opened the pockets and took things out and threw them on the floor… hmm… now the paragraph above is making a bit more sense. He has mentioned once or twice in the past that this boy isn’t very nice on the bus, but he never made a big deal about it and I always suggested he just sit with someone else. Yesterday, though, it seems to have risen to a new level. We talked about it yesterday afternoon for awhile. We talked about what to say to this boy, and I again suggested he not sit with the boy (though I’m not sure who is actually sitting with whom, perhaps the other kid sits down after Lex). I also suggested he talk to his bus driver about it. I asked if the kid bothered him in school (they are in the same class) and Lex said “he keeps it secret in school and only does it on the bus.” I’m not sure if that means he doesn’t do anything in school, or he just does it quietly so the teachers don’t see. I suspect the former as there are plenty of other kids in school and it’s a less confined area.

This morning I talked with his teacher’s aid and she said she had not seen any such behavior from this kid or any other kid towards Lex at school. She was very concerned though and said she would discuss it with his teacher. She also asked if I wanted to involve the school counselor. Umm… I’m not sure what that exactly means. I suggested she hold off on that unless they saw the behavior themselves at school.

After I dropped Lex off at school I took Eve over to her school and had a chat with the bus driver. Conveniently, for me, he is also a janitor at Eve’s school and is very nice. When I approached him and asked if he had a minute to talk he immediately said, “I was hoping you’d come talk to me today! When I saw Lex get off the bus I knew something was wrong!” Turns out he has “written up” this boy several times for bad behavior on the bus. I’m not sure what a write up means exactly. I’m guess I’m fortunate Lex hasn’t come home with one! Anyway, he said he would take care of the problem and make sure it didn’t happen again. He said, “I take care of the little ones and won’t allow that on my bus!”

I walked away from that conversation with mixed feelings. Happy, because the driver seemed to really care about Lex, but also wondering a bit if I jumped too quickly to protect Lex. I don’t think so, but maybe. There is a fine line between encouraging your child to stand up for himself and take care of his own problems, and allowing a little boy to be pushed around by a much bigger classmate. Lex doesn’t have the size of some of the other boys in his class and he certainly doesn’t have the bad attitude! (though I think he has been practicing it a bit with Eve lately which DOES NOT make me happy and DOES make me think about homeschool again!)

When I left Lex at school this morning he said he was going to sit with another kid on the bus this afternoon. I guess we’ll wait and see how he’s doing when I pick him up. I really hope this disappears so he can enjoy the rest of the school year. Every time something happens he immediately starts protesting school and it takes me awhile each time to figure out what’s going on. I miss having him home with me all day!

Lex came home with a note earlier this week that said

Your child has earned happy faces on his daily communication/behavior chart everyday or almost everyday since the beginning of the school year. Since your child is doing a great job following the school rules, I will no longer be sending a daily communication/behavior paper home.

I congratulated him on his consistent good behavior and jokingly asked “How will I know if you’re still behaving in school?” He said, “Don’t worry mom, I’ll tell you every day.” :) He’s so sweet.

Today he came home with his report card. We got his first one in the fall at his parent/teacher conference, but apparently you only get one of those each year. This report card came home in his backpack. No surprises, of course. He is at or exceeding expectations in all areas. We are very proud of him.

I asked him if I could take a picture of him to put with this post, but he refused. He said he doesn’t want me taking any more pictures of him. Hmm…. I’ve been noticing lately that I have a lot more photos of Eve than of Lex. I’ll have to secretly work on that! :)

Last week, while listening to Lex very excitedly tell me that he only has to earn two more stickers at school to get a fancy bracelet prize (he got it today!), it occurred to me that we haven’t done sticker charts around here in awhile and it may be a useful to our morning routine. I discussed it with him this weekend and he was super excited. Together we made up a chart, some goals (out the door with no fussing and in the car by 8am), and some rewards (watch a movie, date with mom or dad, trip to the science museum, etc.) The deal is if he gets all five stickers in a week he’ll get to choose a reward on the weekend. He has been talking about this since Saturday and was out the door bright and early Monday and today. It’s awesome, so far! I know it won’t last forever, but I’m hoping it will at least last long enough to put an end to his whining about school habit.

He hung it on his door and asks me each morning if he can put a sticker on the chart. He is so cute!

Of course we’ve already run into a small glitch. Snow day tomorrow. That’s probably an automatic sticker, right? He shouldn’t lose the week because of the weather. :)

More for Lex:

See what Lex learned from his fire station pamphlets?

Check out the sun shining through our "stained glass" pictures. It was beautiful.

We had our first Kindergarten parent teacher conference this morning. It was nice to chat with his teacher. No surprises, of course. We asked about the reading testing they did awhile ago and she said that “he can word read anything you give him” but apparently his comprehension isn’t quite as advanced. I think she said they tested around a 2nd grade level and he could read it, but needed work on the comprehension. We also talked a bit about how it’s hard to tell with him sometimes because he often just doesn’t want to answer questions and it’s hard to tell if he doesn’t know or just doesn’t want to talk. Or maybe some of both.

Overall she said he is a great kid to have in class. Of course!

We had an interesting interaction in the hallway as we were rushing to the meeting, late of course. There is a counselor who teaches Second Step to the kids. She probably does other stuff as well, but Lex calls her the Second Step Teacher. Second Step is a program that teaches kids social and emotional skills to help them succeed at school. She said good morning to Lex in the hallway and he looked away. It was early and he was feeling nervous about the parent teacher conference (more importantly about whether he wanted to sit in the hallway or play outside with some other students). She paused and said it again, he looked away again. Then she got down right at his level and made eye contact and tried to prompt him on the right way to reply. He kept looking at me and his eyes started to well up. Silly boy. She made me laugh when she said “Ok, let’s try this again,” and she stood up, whirled around, looked at him again and said good morning. He smiled and gave her a little wave. She said, “Ok, I guess we’ll keep working on that one!” It was nice to see that people are working with him on his eye contact aversions and nice to see that she was so nice about it. I think on a different day he would have been much more receptive to her. Anyway, overall it was a nice morning at school :)