First day of school

Very first day of very real school.  The expressions pretty much sum it how they were feeling about it.

In front of the school.
It was a mad house.

And I guess I'll describe the school and borrow some pictures from their website to do so..

First of all... it's a "campus" When I went to elementary school, it was essentially a tunnel of a building. A hallway with classrooms on either side in a big rectangle. As a little kid it seemed enormous, of course, but in hindsight it was a big rectangle. The gym and lunch serving area was at one end of the triagle, the kindergarten and library at the other, the school office in between and all the elementary classrooms in between.

Here.. it's a 'Campus'. With.. I dunno.. 9 buildings. all surrounded by fencing that makes it feel like an upscale prison.

(borrowed picture) below from the inside of the prison campus, the buildings are mostly centered around this patch of green grass surrounded by concrete sidewalks. That's the library building I think. To the left of the picture is the cafeteria area. so from the inside of the prison it looks not much like a prison and more like a farm with many barn buildings

 Below is the cafeteria area. I imagine the noise level will be deafening when kids are in there...

Kayla waving good buy from the kindergarten playground. She has no fear or apprehension. And didn't manage to wrap her teacher around her finger in the 3 second interaction she's had with her. I'll give her until tomorrow to have done that.

Sonia's lined up with her class. The adult in front of the kid with the green backpack is her teacher. The rest of the adult are parents milling around. She picked out the "first day of school" outfit that Grandma got her. And the shoes I bought her for Christmas (2010 or 2011, depending on when they fit, since I found them for under $3 last week shoe shopping, we bought them. I didn't expect her to expect to wear them today, much less insist that they fit), but I think they're probably too big. But of course they're sparkly, so she had to wear them today.

Joey's with his class group. He's looking less apprehensive. He's a boy, standing near boys. I think he'll be ok. Not too many moms hovering over this class. Or perhaps they were done hovering and I went back to take a picture.

The non-kindergarten classes were very inconsistent. Some teacher had their names written in chalk on the concrete in the line up areas, but the second grades were 3 basket ball courts away from the playground.  Sonia's teacher wrote the room number instead of her name and Joey's teacher had nothing on the ground and expected the kids to go directly to the classroom. Of course it would have been Joey's teacher who didn't have things exactly like the orientation said it would be like, because Joey's the one who need advance warning and consistency the most. We'll see how today went.

And then there was the traffic jam. 3 sheriffs were directing traffic, but it was backed up past the entrance to our neighborhood. Walking would have been faster. More dangerous considering how hard it was to pull out in a car into/across the traffic, but perhaps a mom dragging 4 kids on foot would have let someone let us across the road rather than being a mom in a minivan with 4 kids... (well..3 since Larry isn't working this AM and I made him get up so since he was awake, he could veg on the couch with Mickey Mouse and JM just fine..