Kindergarten!! (Take 2)

Because of her January birthday, Megan is not old enough for first grade so she is getting another year of Kindergarten, this time at our local public school instead of at Little Red School House.

The year started with an Open House and an Ice Cream Social. We sat in the corner of the gym with our ice cream and managed to be completely asocial! The next day was assessment day.

At the assessment Megan was asked about shapes (nailed them, duh), and asked to count to 30 (she stopped at 200). She had a bit of trouble counting the number of words in a sentence (she only got to listen to the sentence) but because I know my daughter is brilliant, I deduced this was a dumb activity and not really a weakness in my child. ;) Then the teacher wanted to see if the kids could recognize their own names, so she placed a name placard in front of Megan.

"Do you know what this says?" the Teacher asked.

"Stella Pucket*" Megan responded.

"Good," complimented the Teacher. "Now can you point to your first name?"

Megan just sat there with a bizarre look on her face. Mac panicked - he couldn't figure out what the Teacher was getting at and this was supposed to be a Kindergarten test!!

When Megan didn't comply, the Teacher tried again. "Can you point to the first letter of your first name?"

Megan just sat there with the same quizzical look on her face. And Mac was equally perplexed. Finally, Mr. Garcia, the student teacher came to the rescue. "Umm, that's not Stella Pucket. That is Megan Smith."

"But she knew the name!" the Teacher replied.

"Yeah, Megan can read." Mac filled the Teacher in, which earned Megan a second assessment, this time for reading with the principal.

And just to make sure the school was really impressed with the Smith family, our ailing car battery went completely dead so we weren't able to leave the assessment until we got the principal to loan us her car and her jumper cables so that we could leave the premises.

School finally started and it has been great for Megan. They don't seem to be doing much for her academically, but she is enjoying all the new activities like music and group games. And she ate up the "guidance" lesson they got on responsibility.

After the first two days, I asked Megan if she had made any new friends (the entire group is new to her this year).

"Only one," she told me. "Stella Pucket."



*normally, I'd change a kid's name to protect their identity, but Stella Pucket sounds like it is straight out of kiddie lit; it just didn't seem right to change it, you know, for the integrity of the story and all.