Swimming into School with Shark Week

School starts Monday, and we’ve been getting ready for a couple of weeks.
Marshall has been a big help in reassuring Bryce and Ellie that they will be OK in school. Several times I’ve asked him to come help me explain the “real” school situations that Bryce and Ellie have been concerned about.
Bryce hasn’t really appeared too anxious. He did tell the hair stylist that he wasn’t going to school when she asked him.
But, Ellie has had concerns. My favorite was when she cried to me: “I’ve never been in second grade before!” She is not convince by the fact that everyone in her first-grade class will be joining her in the same hall, just next door to their old classroom.
She then lamented that she doesn’t know her teacher, Mrs. Schroeder. When I reassured her that Mrs. Schroeder knows her, because she told me what a great help Ellie was to preschoolers last year at lunch, Ellie just looked skeptical.
She also doesn’t look forward to trying to play with one friend who is monopolized by a girl who has called her “a smelly rat,” as in “Did you invite this smelly rat to play with us?” Marshall helped out by saying girls can be really mean.
“Boys are mean,” Marshall said, “but girls are really mean and they stay mad longer.”
That is the part of girls growing up that I don’t look forward to dealing with.
Michael and I tried to approach these past couple of weeks as a training session to get in shape for school.
First we started easing the kids back into early-morning hours. Bedtime became earlier each night, until we were actually getting them into bed while the sun was still shining.
This made waking up much easier at 7 a.m. A couple of times we even got them up at 6:30. Getting them right into chores helped them stay awake. With the heat so bad, I made them play outdoors until it became too hot to breathe out there.
By 11 they were ready to come in and start lunch within a half-hour. But after lunch, with the chores done, there wasn’t much left to do except watch TV or let them drag their toys downstairs. Our upstairs gets unbearably hot with these 90+ temperatures. And our downstairs got overrun with little toys of all types and chairs and couch cushions becoming houses, forts and castles.
Then school supplies beckoned. This only consumed a little more than an hour at Wal-Mart. The crowd wasn’t too bad. But with three kids in kindergarten, second grade and fifth grade, the needs were diverse.
Bryce, who will be attending St. Joe’s all-day kindergarten program, needs two of everything. The teachers team-teach, one taking the “math things,” the other taking the “letter things,” as their letter to him explained. So it was 2 green desk boxes, 2 pairs of blunt scissors, 4 pencils, 4 glue sticks and 2 boxes of crayons. Here’s the kicker: They only need 8 crayons. A box of only 8 crayons costs 88 cents, but the box of 24 sells for 20 cents. Luckily, the teachers said they would send home the crayons that aren’t needed. So Bryce got 2 boxes of 24 crayons.
One of the crayon boxes has already been raided to fill Curious George’s backpack, which is a tiny backpack that came fastened onto a big backpack. There is a strap on the big backpack that the small one would Velcro around. It was really cute, and only $9.99. Since the old Spider-Man backpack was wearing thin in a couple of places, Bryce and Curious George became the proud new owners of plain blue, but utterly cool, backpacks.
Ellie was also seeking a fashion statement for her backpack. Months ago she decided she wanted a pink message bag instead of the usual backpack. One of her friends has one, and Ellie was quite impressed with it. To go with her messenger bag, she needed a new lunchbox. She had outgrown her Barbie lunchbox, she informed me. So she chose a stylish pink-and-gray camouflage lunch bag.
Most of Ellie’s supplies were the same, and we got new crayons and such. She did need a paint palette of 8 colors. This is new for second grade; Marshall didn’t need paint then. Folders and notebooks this year are of dolphins, whales, tigers and horses, instead of Tinkerbell, who reigned in first grade. However, a Tinkerbell pencil bag was greeted with squeals of rapture.
Marshall is in fifth grade now. Things change here. At St. Joe, they prepare the kids for middle school by providing lockers on the second floor, away from their first-floor classroom, and requiring the kids to buy combination locks. Marshall was worried about how these worked, and a boy in the aisle at Wal-Mart assured him that the middle school already has locks in the lockers and they weren’t anything to worry about. I thought that was sweet.
The fifth grade requires 5 folders and a couple of notebooks, one of which is a 3-subject one, plus a composition book, and several different art supplies to be kept in a separate art box in their locker. Fifth grade also has homework in every subject every night, I understand. Marshall usually goes through 2 backpacks per year anyway because of rough usage. With all the weight he’ll be packing around this year, I’m wondering if I’ll be buying 2 more before the year is over. Marshall chose a sunny yellow backpack, which is his new favorite color.
Exciting, however, is that fifth-graders get to use ink pens! Marshall’s going to have to shape up his handwriting, though.
All in all, our preparations for school have gone swimmingly, until this week. “Shark Week” has been showing each night on Animal Plant. Two shows, starting at 8 and 9, have kept us all up really late. The kids have been camping out in the living room because it is so hot, and Michael loves Shark Week, so everyone has been awake until 10 p.m. Getting up early the next morning has suffered.
I don’t have much hope of getting them up at 6 a.m. on Monday, I’m afraid. Here’s hoping we all survive next week (a full week of school, instead of starting midweek like we have the past several years). Could be rough.