Yesterday was Michael's first day at kindergarten. No-one knows why, but they stagger the start of classes for kinder kids. Half of them miss out on day 1. Then they are all there on day 2. If anyone can explain the point of this I'm all ears.
I haven't got a picture of the two boys in school uniform yet, but its coming. (Major camera problems since it dropped out of my backpack). The poor little snoot has had quite a few new situations to get used to lately. He has moved into a new room at Friends daycare, and he's also been spending some time at Lady Gowrie daycare. Kinder was just another new room, new couple of grown-ups, new set of kids to get his head around.
Michael came with me to drop Marcus at his classroom. He started chatting to Marcus' teacher Mrs Corney, and he was halfway in through the door of that room when I said "Oi - your room's up this way". He was quite reluctant to go into the kinder room, so we had a little bit of corridor time. I went in and got a book to read to him. Halfway through a page I moved inside and he followed as I kept reading. I moved further in a few times and he followed, until we were in sight of all the blocks, train set, drawing stuff etc etc. By the time I finished the book he was a lot happier.
I left him working on a bit of typography, recreating the cover of the book "Open the Door" which he loves, (because of the way the long bit of the "p" is also the back of the "D"). From what I can gather, during the day they went to the library, and sang a song about frogs. When kinder ended at 3 the teachers' aide took Michael and some of the other kids next door to Lady Gowrie for after kinder care. When I picked him up at 4.30 the girls there said he'd been very happy at the end of kinder, and full of talk about what he'd done.
I hope dropping him off will be a bit smoother on his next kinder day, Thursday. Which is also Marcus' 6th birthday.
We have got a bike for Marcus. Its actually a 2nd hand one given to us by Elf's workmate. We bought a helmet and training wheels for it today. You would think putting training wheels on a bike would be a simple manual task. We took the bike in with us to show the experts in the bike shop, to make sure we were buying the right thing. Sadly I was the first to notice, back home as I was trying to fit the training wheels, that the bike's axle bolt thing was not long enough to accommodate more stuff. I phoned the shop and they gave me some advice to make it work. In following said advice I cracked the rim of the rear hub housing (or something) and little ball bearings started falling out.
So now, we are purchasing a new rear wheel with longer axle bolt thing, the experts are fitting the training wheels, and I am going back to doing what I am actually competent to do - graphic design and making sandwiches.
I picked Marcus up from school the other day. One of his classmates, Jessica, said to me "Hey - how did Marcus get to be so smart?". I really didn't know what to say. I did OK at school but I don't think I ever romped ahead in maths and reading quite like Marcus. Elf comes from a very smart and academically successful family, but they are also surprised and delighted by his abilities. So - I said "Marcus asks a lot of questions and he reads a lot of books". A lame answer. Jessica said "Marcus can read?"
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