Two weeks after turning four, Esther started VPK (K4). Up until now, she has always stayed at home with me and after the way swim lessons went this summer, I was pretty sure it would not be an easy transition for her. I will say that she's been excited to start school and be like her big sister and as you can see from the pictures, she had a great big smile on her face before leaving the house!
Here are the very girly, sparkly, light up shoes I mentioned in her birthday post.
To my surprise, Esther did not shed one tear when I left her in the classroom that first morning, she kind of gave me a sad face, but was fine once she started playing at the table. I honestly had envisioned the teacher having to pry her off of me, so I was relieved that she did so well. I had a little teary moment leaving her, but did better than I was expecting. Well... when it was time to pick her up, Woody stayed in the car with the other girls, so I could go in by myself to get her. She sort of had a smile on her face walking towards me. As we're walking out of the building, I'm all happy and asking her if she had a good day and if she liked it, and she shakes her head no. I ask again, and she shakes her head no, begins crying and says, "it was really scary." Okay. My heart is breaking wide open at this point and I pick her up and carry her the rest of the way to the car. She's sobbing by the time we reach it. This is sort of how the first week went... she would reluctantly walk into the classroom, no tears, have a great day according to the teacher, and then by the time we would get to the car to go home, she would lose it. We decided she could hold it together during school, and then when she got to me, she would release everything bottled inside. Exhaustion and a hungry tummy also contributed to these "meltdowns." These continued the first few weeks, happening at least 3 times a week. And they were hard. The meltdowns would show up in different ways, like tantrums... several times, I had to pull over on the side of the road to try and calm her down. So... because she is a very young 4, I decided to give her until week 6 of school to see if we could work through this, and if not, I was going to take her out. Although she was doing great in class, the after effects were really hard on all of us. Well... I am happy to say that beginning with week 5 and since, there have been no tears! I don't know that I would say she loves school, but she definitely likes it now. It just literally took 5 weeks! And just in the last week or so, she has begun singing new songs, reciting poems, etc. just out of the blue that she's learning at school, and she's so proud to share them with us. I don't get much feedback from her when I pick her up, but by dinner time, she starts sharing information about her day, which has been really fun to hear! She really likes Chapel and she also likes her Spanish class. I'm really thankful that she is enjoying school now. I'm also very thankful for her sweet teachers and those who do carline that make a "big to do" over her and make her feel special... my sweet middle one!
We went ahead and celebrated Esther's birthday at school that first week. Fridays are "casual days," so she wore her new favorite color, pink. A friend in her class, that we'd met this summer at swimming lessons, has the same birthday. I'm glad Ms. Lisa let us go ahead and celebrate 2 weeks after, instead of waiting and celebrating in June, 2 months before!
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