Getting Ready for Kindergarten
Wells is ready for Kindergarten! We left the boys at home and headed out together on Saturday to pick out her firstbackpack and knock out the school supply list. We did the basic all american thing and went to Pottery Barn Kids, Target (complete with Starbucks and a Jamba Juice and popcorn in our cart), and then Chic Fil A. I loved every single minute of it.
She spent the entire afternoon practicing leaving and coming home from school. Complete with fake home work and tests. She gave herself an A on one and a B on the other and asked me sign it. Haha!
It is so incredible to see her so confidant about leaving home and starting something new.
When people asked us why we waiting to send her to Kindergarten, this is why. A year ago, when she was five, she was returning to something familiar for another year of preschool with teachers and friends and a building she knew. And she was terrified; overwhelmed with anxiety that it was going to be "different" and she was worried about that. She knew what the Three's had been like and she knew what Pre-K had been like but she didn't know what JK (junior kindergarten) would be like and the unknown was too much for her to process. So the idea of sending her off the elementary school was absurd. It didn't matter how many educational skill sets she had mastered or how many of her friends she'd be going off to school with, despite being five she just wasn't ready for Kindergarten last year. Oh what a difference a year makes.
If you're curious what anxiety looks in a five year old, it's bees in your tummy, and pain in your foot, and waking up all night with the same questions, both specific and abstract, over and over again for weeks despite having been given a solid answer each time. I'm happy to talk a bit more in depth about that and some of the ways we're teaching her cope. So far they seem to be working and will hopefully be tools she can continue to use as she gets older.