My Baby Goes to Kindergarten

Tomorrow we start the official back-to-school process where I will take my son to Kindergarten JumpStart. We will meet my son's teacher, find out about the school, and get acquainted with a new-to-him school. I'm invested in this school, serving on the executive committee for the PTA and participating in a lottery to even be able to have my children go there.

Cedar Rapids Public Schools do things right when it comes to the magnet schools. They are first, and foremost, neighborhood schools. After that, it is by chance that students get accepted into the schools and we were lucky that the STEAM magnet school had room for us. Once you are accepted though, you become part of that school's family.

It helped that there were other families from other networks that my husband and I associate with to keep us engaged in the PTA, but to be part of the parent leadership team while my son is starting kindergarten and my daughter is in 2nd grade, it is a little awe-inspiring. I say kind things about all the schools my children have attended in Cedar Rapids, but I say exceptional things about the amazing school culture at JSA. All the teachers are invested. They want to be there and their attrition rate recently has been due to leadership opportunities - not because they disliked the school.

So as I reflect on the past 6 years and how my baby is now going to be walking into his first day of kindergarten this year, I wonder what growth I will see in him this year. Six years ago, next week, we made it home from the hospital after a 50 day NICU stay. Five years ago, next month, he took his first step. Three and four years ago, I really don't remember that well. Two years ago, he started preschool. A year ago, he rode the bus for the first time to alternative kindergarten. Thursday, he'll walk through the doors of a new school and begin his kindergarten year.

Will he surpass his sister with his reading skills?

Will he be even more engineering-minded when he enters first grade?

Will he love ST Math? (Likely, yes - since last week he said to his sister, "I am a Johnson student now; you have to let me play ST Math.")

Will he love kindergarten?

Will he keep his hands to himself?

I'll keep you posted on the answers to these questions, but for now I just want the wonder and awe of remembering that my once 3 lb. 3 oz little boy is now an energetic, fun-loving, inquisitive almost-kindergartner.