A Birthday Back-to-School!

Who has their birthday on the FIRST real day of school?  This girl.  

 We had an odd "trial run" of school for one hour the Friday before, which consisted of a story, an art project, some housekeeping, and meet-and-greet.  Parents were required to be there along with their kids because, "Sometimes the start of school is scary."  Okay.

Diddles' teacher is great.  So far so good!  She's young and single and energetic.  A USU graduate, and already has a Teacher of the Year under her belt in the district.  She is patient and soft-spoken and ALWAYS kind.  I couldn't teach these young grades.  I admire her.  We found out that for each child's birthday, they get to present and ALL ABOUT ME book with pages about themselves.  The kids were to write the words themselves, "Even if they use invented spelling".  These kinds of comments made me nervous.  We are JUST BARELY learning to recognize our letters, let alone the sounds they make, and her signature is the only thing she can consistently produce!

I must say Diddles' start-of-school weighed the heaviest on my mind.  Would she get the support she needed?  Would she find her place?  Would she have friends?  Would she LIKE school, or would we have to wrestle her to her seat every day?  After our PRE-School day, she felt pretty confident going in on the first day.  It helped she got to wear her birthday shirt, and had her All About Me booklet in her backpack, which she got to share with the class at the end of the day!

These shoes are SO her.  Size 2!

Josh and I got to go in at the end of the day and see her present her book.  It was the perfect confidence-boost she needed for the start of school.  They sang Happy Birthday to her, and made her feel so special.