The first day of school

Summer has flown by and Xander started first grade today. Yesterday he went over to the school and found out who his teacher was going to be (Ms. Goff) and met her. He's in a kindergarten/first grade mixed class with 13 first graders and 8 kindergartners. Unfortunately none of his friends from last year are in the same class, though the few behavior problems he had last year mostly involved those friends so things are probably set up for the best. He still gets to see them at recess and at his after school program. The mixed class should also work out well since the kindergartners go home about an hour and a half earlier than the first graders so the class size drops by almost half for that last hour. He's been tight-lipped about what went on today but he seemed to enjoy it. Some pictures from this morning are over at Flickr.

The Graduate

Pictures from Xander's kindergarten graduation are now posted over at the usual place. They had the ceremony at the start of the school day on Friday. Each class sang a song, Xander's class sang "What a Wonderful World". One of the other parents got a video of the singing but I haven't been able to get a hold of it yet. After the ceremony we spent some time collecting all the schoolwork that Xander still had in the classroom including the "pancake nest" (they made ceramic bird nests but Xander wasn't happy with how his was turning out so he smashed it and dubbed the result "pancake nest").

Student of the Month

So a few days ago Xander was awarded student of the month for "doing a great job in math" (I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree). I think every kid in the class got recognized for something at some point in the year and this time it was Xander's turn (a couple of other kids got awards also). I just posted the pictures over at Flickr.

Also last week they had a sidewalk chalk festival at school. Here's Xander's rendition of a fish for the festival:

What happens at kindergarten stays at kindergarten

So it seems like Xander's first day of kindergarten went smooth. So far the only details that we've been able to get out of him are that the teacher read them a book called the "kissing hand" and that his teacher, Ms. Campbell, is nice. At least he wasn't kicking and screaming like one of the kids. If you look closely at the pictures -- click the picture above to go to the gallery -- you'll see that one of his classmates has a rather interesting hairdo. Lisa only lost it a little bit as we were leaving and I have to admit that all day I was wondering how he was doing in the back of my mind. Hopefully we'll get some more details out of him in the coming days.