Practice Kindergarten

First Born, being the helpful sibling that she is (honestly), thought it would be a good idea for him to have a “practice day” of kindergarten, at home, to get him ready for his Big Day.

She started off the school day by taking attendance, which took about five seconds, because all she had to to was have him sit at the kitchen table and say, “here” when she called his name. Next, she went through and explained the difference between being a sack lunch kid and a hot lunch kid.

At this point First Born was in full-on teacher mode, she designed hall passes to use for the day, she made up hand signals to use for bathroom trips, our house was starting to feel like school.

For the first class of the day, First Born took her brother and tag-along sister, the Blonde Bomber, to our basement for story time. There she chose a book from the bookshelf and read her siblings a story, of course stopping after every page to show them the pictures in the book. She was getting this teaching thing figured out.

After story time, I told the kids we were going to take a field trip, to the grocery store. It was simply an errand we needed to run, but I figured if I disguised it as a school trip, they’d be more likely to get excited about it. It worked, First Born made permission slips for kids to give me as they got on the bus (minivan).

Once back at home, we had recess outside. The kids played basketball, wrote with sidewalk chalk, and rode their bikes around the driveway.

After recess, was lunch. While the kids were outside, I packed their lunch boxes with sandwiches, grapes and applesauce. They came in from outside and thought is was pretty cool to eat from their lunch boxes.

After lunch, all the kids began to tire of the “practice kindergarten” activity, after all they’d played it for almost three hours, First Born decided she would give out homework, then dismiss school for the day. Her homework assignment, show and tell, that the kids can present tomorrow when they play practice kindergarten once again.

-Pete