It is one week.....12 years and 51 weeks to go!

It has been one week of M's new school. Graduated from montessori to big school...big in terms of convention, size and independence, I guess. She goes by school bus really early and gets back before you know it. Soon that will change and it will be decent chunk of time....enough for a part-timer at the office like me.

So in between getting things ready the night before to getting them to bed in the evening (yes, 7:45 pm is still evening...there were times before when 9:00 pm would be when life started!) and then waking up before the alarm in fright, I am a walking, barely intelligible zombie! When I have to figure out a washing schedule for uniform, I consider myself grown up (and straitjacketed!). Okay, I am grown up now. Young at heart....but grown up! :-D

She has already made friends - three of them, a big deal for a kid who makes few but fast friends. She had one BESTEST friend all through 3.5 years of montessori. I was a bit worried about the transition - would she get back on the right bus? Would she be okay asking for help when she needed it? So far, people looked out for the kids and things were taken care of.

I am pretty impressed with the school - this 'Big' school is pretty organized. In the middle of chaos with their new campus not ready, a shift system to manage all the kids in a smaller space until the facility is ready, they still find time to ensure that the kids take the books to school in parts and believe in leaving the books in school. No lugging around heavy bags, something that was a given in conventional schools in my day. They have camping and pottery, art and yoga, hands on science and Hindi....quite a bit of fun in general. The kids on campus seemed pretty happy to go to school daily and so far, M is showing the same interest.

It helps that there are kids from her old school in her bus, her class and friends from where we live, her dance class, our friends' kid....enough familiar faces. I was worried if she would strike out on her own. Three friends...she knows their names and actually reached out. Why am I so thrilled and stuck on this?

I have a friend in town from my UKG days. We talk every other day, our kids play together and in some ways, she is my conscience...we have never ever fought as far back as I can remember. Maybe this is why the friend angle really thrills me.

Academics-wise they are doing very, very little. From multiplication and adjectives level language in montessori, pal has been assigned the alphabet of day one. I hope it is only because it is day one! Some drawing, coloring and basic words.....way below their 'KG' class work. One part of me wants to go out and buy some books and see that all that Hindi vocab is not lost (she already has a better vocabulary than me...though that is not saying much, maintaining this now will mean less learning work for me later!) and the other part says "chill, the pressure will come in a few years, why worry?" Will probably do a bit of both! :-D

G'night!