At the end of his Pre-K year last year, I met with Bradley's kindergarten teacher to get some tips on how to prepare him for Kindergarten. She offered great ideas on how to make learning fun and provided wonderful encouragement on the progress Bradley had made. Over the summer, Bradley attended private tutoring for one hour, twice a week; attended and participated in week long Vacation Bible School at our church (I was his group's teacher); participated in a 3 hour social skills group, 3 times; participated in swim lessons; and engaged in numerous play dates. To try to keep us on-track with scheduling I created calendars with Bradley's activities and a schedule to follow at home. To be honest, we didn't exactly follow the schedule as much as I had hoped, but Bradley did very well with all of the activities we planned.
Meet the Teacher night finally arrived and we were off to meet Bradley's new teachers. To help better prepare them I typed a letter to each teacher (homeroom teacher, resource aid, music teacher, PE teacher, and speech therapist) with information about Bradley's Strengths, Challenges, Situations that might lead to upset feelings, How to get Bradley back on track/comfort him, How to keep Bradley on task, and Bradley's favorite things. We handed out our notes and a welcome back gift (travel beverage cups with candy) to each of our teachers as we walked to each room. Bradley seemed to enjoy each classroom, but liked the gymnasium and resource classroom the best.
The night before the first day of kindergarten arrived. Bradley happily went to bed, looking forward to his first day of riding the school bus home. We prayed together and as I was walking out of Bradley's room he said, "Wait Mom. Give me kisses. Give me kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss." I smiled big and kissed Bradley several times on his face as he smiled with joy.
We woke up the next day and Bradley jumped out of bed when I asked if he was ready to go to school and then ride the school bus home. The morning went very smoothly and we even left our house on time. Bradley posed for a few pictures before we left the house and then once we arrived at school. I had to keep Brad from running into the school. He was very excited!
When Bradley entered his classroom he was ready to play and talk to his teacher, but it was time for him to sit and color while he waited for instructions. Bradley didn't want to color (it's one of his least favorite school tasks) and said he wanted to go home. After a minute of talking about it Max and I left and I found out later that he was doing fine. A friend of mine has a son in Bradley's class and she sent me a picture of Bradley "photo-bombing" the picture of her son and their teacher. She told me Bradley really wanted to be in their picture, and sure enough he looked like he was having fun.
I went to school and taught my first day of the Fall 2013 semester at WCJC. The day seemed to fly by for me and I managed not to get too emotional about having a kindergartner. It was a rainy day, so I wasn't sure how happy Bradley would be when he got home. I picked up Max from daycare and we headed home to wait for Bradley to get off of the school bus. I underestimated how long it would take the bus to get to our home, so we ended up waiting about 30 minutes in the drizzle, listening for school bus sounds. Finally.., we could hear the school bus coming down the road and we (my husband, my in-laws, Gabe's aunt, Gabe's grandma, Max, and me) watched eagerly as it came to a stop.
Bradley got off of the bus with a huge smile on his face. The bus driver gave us two thumbs up and said Bradley did great. Bradley said he had a great day, that he ate his left over lunch on the school bus, and that he was ready to watch television. All week Bradley seemed to enjoy school, especially knowing that the school bus would bring him home each day. Thankfully Bradley also earned 5 smiley face stamps in his conduct folder. Bradley was very proud of "all the happy faces" and impressed me in learning what a trapezoid, parallelogram, hexagon, and rhombus look like. I see the joy and excitement in Bradley's face when he shows off his school work and I pray that he continues to enjoy kindergarten for the rest of the year as he did his first week!
