School Begins

School has now started. Johnny is now in school all day. I think he likes it alright. But he has to make new friends because neither of his friends from kindergarten are in his class. I thought that was too bad, but being a first grader and so young, Johnny has taken it well. He plays with his friend Dylan at recess and Alyssa he sees on the bus. Ruth is in fifth grade with a boy teacher she loves, and Kate is in fourth grade with no opinions yet.

Today after school I had each of the kids sit with me and tell me how their day went. None of them had anything to say. I had to keep thinking of specific questions and squeezing answers out of them. Then just before dinner when Anya was doing her nightly scream because she wants to eat immediately instead of in two to ten minutes, Ruth started telling me about school. But I had to have her repeat herself about 6 times because I either could not hear her, or I was taking care of Adam, Rachel, and Anya. While Ruth was telling me about her day, Kate started telling us about her day too. It took a while, but I finally got both stories. Too bad they didn't tell them when things were calm and I had time to sit down and listen. It is funny how things just happen like that with kids. They never like to do things on your schedule.

Here are their stories:
In Ruth's fifth grade class, they are having a poetry section once a week. If they can memorize the poem and recite it, they get to pick out a treat. Ruth memorized and recited the poem and picked out a chocolate coin. Ruth still remembered the poem and recited it to me. I think she was pleased that she could remember it so quickly.

Kate missed the first day of school yesterday because of a stomach ache, so she was pretty excited to meet her teacher today. But her teacher was gone to a wedding in Mexico and won't be back until Monday. Kate said that her substitute was very mean and just made them work all day. At one point, the substitute let the kids have some free time and cut out some magazines if they wanted to. Kate did not cut out anything. A boy in her desk group threw his waste paper on Kate's desk and said, "You are in our group so you have to share in the work. Go throw this away." Kate said that she threw the paper back on his desk and said "No way, clean up your own mess." The boy threw it back on to Kate's desk and so it went. Kate went up to tell the substitute, and the boy followed and said that he had not done that. The substitute told them to sit down and deal with it by themselves.