Disorientation

I just got back from the Kindergarten Orientation.

I know, I know, school doesn't start until September. But trust me, all the orientations and meetings and testing is being done NOW.

It was scary. And very informative and enlightening and in many ways reassuring. I am now much more confident that there will actually BE a classroom for my child. I know he will have teachers, and I've met them, although I won't know which one until later this summer. I learned what they will be looking for in his screening test on Saturday, and how important (or not) it will be in the long run.

But he's going to be overwhelmed and shell shocked.

Up until now, all of the academics have been secondary to his emotional and social development. But in September he will have to get on a bus BY HIMSELF or else I will drive him to school and he will get out of the car BY HIMSELF, with me still IN THE CAR, and I am supposed to just DRIVE AWAY... And he will spend 2 hours and thirty minutes shaping letters out of sticks and clay, learning how to write each letter "the right way" which means every line has to be written in the right direction, reading books and discussing vocabulary and actually READING different words on his own, not to mention doing graphs and charts and collecting data and learning to count by fives or by twos... every second filled with something, every moment focused, and then he'll be bringing work HOME. HOMEWORK! IN KINDERGARTEN!

Which is actually cool, because it would be nice to see what's going on at school so we can help him out. And it's good to know that this school actually HAS a program, a curriculum, and isn't just making it up.

But it's also scary. Because there's a lot of information he's going to have to learn. There's a lot of paying attention. There's... so much.