Mom, It's My First Day of Kindergarten!

OK, I'm a little ahead of the game here, but today we went to the library and I happened upon this really cute picture book called Mom, It's My First Day of Kindergarten! by Hyewon Yum. It's all about a little boy starting school who is so excited and he is the one reassuring his mother who is pretty worried about her little boy going to the "big kids' school". At the beginning, she is shown as this tiny little person, so worried about this big event and then when she picks up her son, she's drawn to regular mom-size. I guess for some kids and moms, this is a role-reversal but when my children started school I don't remember doing much reassuring. And I was the same way. My dad loves to tell the story of how he went to wake me up on the first day of school and I was sitting there on the bed, already dressed, hair combed, ready to go. I don't remember it myself but knowing me, I'm sure I was thrilled to finally be going to school.

Me on my fifth birthday. I'm not sure why my eyes look that way--they look fine in the original! And the picture was in color, too. The subtleties of scanning escape me, I guess...

In a few weeks my youngest child will be starting kindergarten. It will just be half-day and I'll still get her for most of the day but it's the beginning of a different era in my life. 18 years ago my oldest child started kindergarten. He was so excited to start school and I was excited for him. Kindergarten is such a cute age. But I do remember thinking that here he was finally getting to be a lot easier to take care of and NOW he was going to school. I'm a little more protective of my youngest, especially with her health issues.

Here is my oldest hugging his younger brother on his first day of school. Aren't they so cute?

That book, along with some other books, have started me thinking about school experiences and I want to do a bunch of posts about that. You would think that by now I would have this all figured out, but what really is the purpose of school? I'm beginning to realize that different schools have different purposes and goals. So perhaps my question should be, what are MY goals in educating my children? Since my oldest is now 23 and less than a year from college graduation, maybe it's a little late to be thinking about it! Actually I have been thinking about it, maybe just not in enough detail. And I did work pretty hard to teach my oldest son a lot of different things. And I'm so proud of the person he has become. But I still have quite a few children that need a good education so I have plenty of work to do!

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