The first Meet & Greet

Today was Jesse’s Meet & Greet at his school. Jennifer’s is tomorrow, on Jesse’s first day back at school. Jesse is VERY excited about going back to school. He’s in First Grade now! The Big Time! Woo-hoo!!! And I’m doubly happy because now he’ll be in school full-time, with the regular one day for early release in the week. Of course, this means he’ll have to get up earlier for school and get acquainted with having lunch in the school cafeteria, but he is still excited about going. (And no more of those brown-bag lunches that always had the same thing in it Every Day.)

So I took him to his Meet & Greet. I was excited to learn that a teacher who had been Jennifer’s first grade teacher was still a first grade teacher this year and I hoped she would be Jesse’s teacher this year, too, because she is just AWESOME. (Jennifer has a picture of her and this teacher in her room.) But, unfortunately, one of the new teachers at the school will be Jesse’s teacher this year. Darn!

All the same, I am grateful Jesse’s new teacher has a last name that is easy to pronounce. I can’t tell you the number of times I kept being corrected on the pronunciation of his kindergarten teacher’s name. Ack! So, yay for that.

Jesse met his new teacher and the teacher’s aide, then we spent some time touring his new classroom and figuring out where everything was. He was excited to learn that one of his friends from kindergarten will be in his class. While we were at the school, I also paid the annual fee for school supplies (thank goodness there’s only ONE child I have to buy school supplies for!) and then checked in with the office about bus schedules. Unfortunately, Jesse was taken off the bus route because we live out of district. So I’ll be driving him to school and picking him up. He was really disappointed that he couldn’t ride the school bus anymore, but he understood that nothing could be done about it.

Because Jesse will be eating lunch at the school cafeteria now, I took him to the cafeteria and showed him around. I explained to him what happens when his classroom comes to the cafeteria for lunch and I walked him through the route he would take while standing in line. I also explained to him he would get a special code number to punch into the keypad to pay for his lunches. (They train kids on how to memorize their numbers and use the keypad.) He thought it was all really cool and got excited about going into the cafeteria at lunchtime.

After we were done there, I allowed Jesse some time to play at the school playground. I spent some time talking with a grandmother who was there with her two grandchildren. Jesse liked playing with her grandchildren, two boys. It seemed like he made a new friend. (One of the boys was a second grader.) Then we left and came home.

I’m so excited about Jesse going into first grade and I hope it will be a good experience for him.