Kindergarten Warm-Up

Kindergarten is just on the horizon for our family. In our school district, the incoming kindergarteners come to the school building for a couple of two hour sessions in April for what is labeled "kindergarten warm-up". The purpose of this time is for the kids to get an introduction to the school setting, for the teachers to meet and assess the children, and for parents to absorb a whole lot of information.

Anna has kindergarten warm-up on Thursday and Friday afternoon last week; she loved the experience. On the way home on Friday she asked if she would get to do this every Thursday and Friday now :) We're pretty sure she's going to really enjoy kindergarten next year. We're also sure that she did just fine on the different assessments last week. Anna told us about some of the activities she did with the teachers and, using my education background, I was able to figure out the kinds of skills they were checking. We'll get an informal written report about Anna's "performance" in a few weeks, along with any recommendations for summer school preparation for her.

The adult portion was hard for me to get through :( It's been several years since I've been asked to sit in a big room with dozens of other people and listen to presenters for two hours straight. I never liked it before and I certainly didn't enjoy it this time either. Being home these past 4 1/2 years has given me lots of opportunity to move around and be engaged in multiple activities (the nice way to say not having a chance to sit down much during the day :) and I appreciate all of those aspects much more since I had my two afternoons of meetings.

Besides the warm up, we're just trying to keep up a good balance in our life of family time, personal time, scheduled activities, free play time, work, inside time, outside time, etc. Our spring weather has been so different this year from past years, but at least it's nice to have the variety. On days like yesterday we spend most of the day outdoors. On days like today and tomorrow, we spend most of the day indoors. It keeps us on our toes, right?