Jack Starts Pre-K

School kicked off this week for Jack, and they have a gradual approach to getting the pre-k kids started.  We went to Meet the Teacher night on Monday where we got to look at his classroom and introduce Jack to his teacher.  His teacher lives down the street from us, so we had met her once at our block party a couple months ago.  Since Meet the Teacher night we have seen her almost every evening outside at the park with her daughter :).

On Wednesday 8/19 Jack went for an hour and a half with a portion of the kids from his class.  They just did a quick walk-through of a normal day in class so the kids could get familiar with the routine.  The school does a drop-off line where you pull up to the curb and a teacher reaches in to help the child out of the car and escorts them to their classroom.  When the teacher reached in to get Jack he curled up in a ball and started crying.  Mary also started crying.  It kind of makes sense, because it would be confusing as to why a stranger was reaching in to pull you out of your car as a child.  Anyway, we had to pull into the parking lot and walk Jack in since he didn't want to get out of the car.  

After the car line trauma he was slow to warm up to the classroom.  I tried to get a picture of him at the table, and this was the best one I could get:  

The picture with his teacher cracks me up every time I look at it.  

When we picked him up the teacher said that he talked to her and was completely fine the entire time in class.  He's just slow to warm up sometimes.

While Jack was at school, Owen, Mary, and I went to a local bakery to pick up some cookies as a treat for the first day.  Mary got her hands on the school bus :).

Yesterday there was no school for Jack since another set of pre-k kids were there for their hour and a half.  We had an end of summer picnic before Jack officially got started with school.  Both boys were excited for a picnic, but Jack said he didn't want to be too hot or for there to be any bugs.  I told him that meant we would have to eat inside.  Instead of going somewhere and risking dissatisfaction with nature, we had our picnic on the trampoline in case we needed to move inside.  I made them little homemade lunchables, and I found an off brand of Dip n Dots at the grocery store for a treat.

Jack's teacher sent out an email asking if anyone would volunteer to bring snack for the class for the first 5-6 days until she got a schedule put together.  I volunteered us for the first day today, because Jack always loved bringing snack at his last school.  I thought it would be a good way to get him excited about class instead of nervous.  I made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, and he was pretty excited to be the class muffin man.

A few days ago I made a whiteboard for Jack to hold on his first day based on a few versions I saw on pinterest.  It's kind of hard to see in his picture, so here it is up close.

This morning Jonathan took Jack to his first full day of school.  School starts at 8:15am and ends at 3pm five days per week.  I have cried intermittently throughout the week at the thought of not having him around as much.  Here is his picture this morning:

And here's one of him headed out the door:

I feel extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend all day, every day with Jack for over 4.5 years.  He did spend 4 months going to school two days a week, but this is such a huge change for us.  I've really enjoyed the flexibility of the little years where we didn't have a lot of structure to our day.  It's going to take some time to get used to our new routine.

Owen starts preschool two days per week on September 8th, so we'll get some cute pictures of his first day soon!