The Eve of the First Day of School

When I was a child and a teenager, I loved the first day of school.  I waited all summer for it, and the first three weeks of August were always excruciatingly long.  I could barely stand it.  I counted the days until school would start.  There was nothing better than the smell of school on the first day, and those squeaky, shiny waxed floors, my empty desk waiting for my carefully selected school supplies.

When I was in college, I loved to see all my friends back on campus, and looked forward to getting the syllabus for all the classes I was excited to take.

When I was a teacher, I was always excited and a little nervous about the first day of school.  I was excited to meet all my new students, excited about what they were going to learn and excited about all the new ideas I had about how to teach it.  I was nervous about what issues might arise and whether I was prepared enough.  Could anyone ever be prepared enough for any school day at any time of the year?  I don’t think so.

Now I’m a parent, and the first day of school really just gives me anxiety!  I’m always sad about what I thought I’d accomplish with my kidlets over the summer that didn’t happen.  I’m sad that they’ll be gone every day even though they nearly drove me crazy all day for the past three months.  I’ll miss the noise, the chaos and the mayhem all day long.  I wonder if I should be homeschooling my kidlets, even though I’m pretty sure that’s not a very good idea for a plethura of reasons.  I worry they will forget to behave in school.  I worry they will not be excited to learn.  I worry that the broken educational system (I do NOT fault their teachers) will educate all the creativity out of them and slurp up their desire to learn authentic new things.

Thankfully, however, in the past, when they’re off to the places they are supposed to be at, I realize that I’m free to enjoy the kidlets left at home even more.  They do fine, learning about how to deal with all sorts of situations and all sorts of people, and the struggles that come up just help them to grow.  So, it’s OK.  I just have to remind myself.  Or have my husband remind me when I’m getting a bit hysterical.  For the most part, they like school.

This kidlet, for example, is excited to go to kindergarten:

He’s taking the whole thing in stride.  At the open house tonight, he efficiently (emphasis on efficiently) examined all parts of his classroom and unpacked his school supplies.  He liked the Question of the Day best.  The question was:  “Are You excited to come to Kindergarten tomorrow?”  He marked an X on the Yes side of the paper and asked me to take a picture for my blog.  Of course I obliged.  (You can see his X if you look carefully).

Preparing for kindergarten with him has been quite comical.  We went school shopping.  He immediately found everything he needed and threw it in the cart with little or no deliberation. There was no wondering about what the supplies might be used for.  He just found everything and asked to go out for ice cream.  (We did.)  When it was time to choose a Backpack online, he looked at all the sites I had up on the screen and immediately picked a red backpack, and that was the end of that.  OK.   Again, there was no deliberating.  When it was time to pack the backpack today, he did it as quick as possible, mentioning that he had a lot of other things to take care of.  OK.

It is so, so unlike his big sister, who deliberates everything.  We spent hours picking out just the right school supplies and analyzing how they were different from last year.  She’s had her back to school clothes planned out for weeks.  It took days for her to choose just the right backpack because she had to think it over.  We had to pack and repack her backpack this afternoon.

Tonight, at the end of the day, I’m reflecting on the summer, and even though I feel sad about all the things I wanted to do and didn’t (I did have a baby, after all!  I do have an excuse) there were a lot of good things that came from my lethargy.  For example, I was stuck on the couch, pregnant and miserable, and we read books, and books and more books.  It was lovely to be snuggled up together.  Ya Ya spent hours and hours reading by herself, too.  I wasn’t always able to generate fun and exciting activities because I was so tired or busy taking care of Squirmy, but the kidlets did a wonderful job entertaining themselves.  They built a fort out of blankets almost every other day.  They built with legos, with zoob, with Tinkertoys and Lincoln Logs and wonderful wooden unit blocks.  Ya Ya had all sorts of big plans about setting up towns, castles and mud kitchens, and as long as Mr. SP and The Banana did what she told them to do, they played seamlessly.  When they didn’t, I did a lot of refereeing.  They squabbled, and squabbled, but they got a little better at resolving squabbles themselves.  They slept in every morning, and learned to clean up the table and dining room floor themselves.  Those are all good things.

As The Banana’s preschool teacher reminded me this week, play is how kids learn.  Play is just as important as anything.

Goodbye summer.  We’ll miss you and your warm, long, lazy days.  But we love fall too!