Kindergarten!

I feel I need to backtrack before writing about Livvy's first day of Kindergarten. The topic needs backtracking because it wasn't an easy decision to make on which school Liv should go to. When we lived in our last area I had decided to look into our School District options. I didn't know much about the closer schools but I knew we wanted to move soon so I looked up our options and found that our district has a "choice" option that you can try to get into a different school than the one in your area and also that they have some elementary schools with dual-immersion language programs. A couple have Spanish, one with Mandarin, Portuguese, and German. Only one of those schools started with the program as early as Kindergarten, so we decided to go with that- Timpanogos Elementary.

During the Summer, as we were getting closer to school starting up, I was getting more nervous with that decision and started looking into if my feeling were valid or not. I asked a bunch of different parents what their opinions were and got SO MANY different answers. Some said they loved Timp, others wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole, etc. I did some research on their ratings and decided I liked Westridge a lot. It also had another perk that we knew the Principal personally (he was the best man at our wedding!)  

I had different things going on in my head.

1) Is Timpanogos a good school anyway, despite their testing scores?

2) Will I regret not putting Livvy in the Spanish-immersion program? (It's difficult-if not impossible-to start into it in another grade. You have to start with it, basically)

3) Westridge is so organized. I already knew who the teacher was going to be, her room, schedule, etc.) and Timpanogos procrastinated testing till last minute-it felt)

4) I worried about Livvy fitting in. You always do, I'm sure, but I didn't want her to feel left out by kids that couldn't communicate with her, on top of other reasons.

I know that I'm blabbering here. That's kind of how it felt in my brain for a few weeks. But finally I decided, based on #2, mostly. My sister was talking to me about it one day. Her kids are all older than mine and she's much more experienced as a mom of school kids. She said that kids gain a confidence when they have something extra for themselves. She eluded to the fact that if Livvy learned Spanish, starting now and continuing, she would be able to have that to boost her self-esteem and confidence. There can be other things in her future that do the same but I'm all for starting something now.

And since I made the decision and went back to Timp for Liv's test and re-registering her, I found out that their test scores are lower because they include a lot of disabled children that other schools don't have to factor into their scores. And they are passing all the tests that I heard they weren't. You REALLY can't believe all that you hear and need to keep listening. I guess that lesson could be used in many other decisions that I'll need to make in the future.

 

About Livvy's first day of Kindergarten:

She picked out her Brave and Angus backpack, she chose to wear her new horse shirt Gamma got for her birthday and wear leggings (one of the favorite wardrobe choices), and her Rapunzel flip flops. I She was so excited to go. I didn't really notice a lot of nervousness, mostly excited. She wasn't going to stop and let me take "first day" pictures but finally did. This is one is so her...



 

 She got picked for the immersion program. They did the test to see if she needed a full day of school or could do just a half day. They don't have a full day of Spanish-immersion so you have to know enough of the criteria to get into half day. And on top of that, many more parents want their kids in the immersion program than actually get in so that was another very good thing.
I choose to have her go in the afternoon since it was affect Ashton's nap times a little less than the morning one would/will. Plus Liv is usually really good in the mornings at home and starts to get bored in the afternoon. So this way she'll get bored of us and home and move on to new things at school in the day. So she goes from 12:05-3:05 M-Th and early out on Friday, 11:25-1:30.

 

Daddy left work to go on her first day. He met us at home and went with us. We all went into the school and I walked in her class with her for a minute. She found her cubby and her seat and got right to playing with her new classmates.

I would be lying if I said I didn't cry that day. But I didn't while we were there with her. I was too occupied in making sure she felt in place and was settled and loading up kids into the car afterwards but when I was driving in the car later I couldn't help it. There is something so striking about having your first kid in school. Preschool was a little like that but it wasn't as official, for me. I knew that she didn't really have to go. But now- she a school girl!