Brody's First Days of Kindergarten

Yep, I know this post is over a month behind, but my OCD would not let me write out of order.  I am slowly getting caught up on my blog posts list.  I am very happy to report that Brody's first days of kindergarten have been a huge success with no tears.  He continues to love going to big school, and I have been so impressed with the progress he has made already.  I was very happy to see they use a good phonics program that Brody really loves called Letterland.  Each letter is represented by a little character, and they watch videos for each character and learn about the sounds they make.  He learned all of the characters very quickly and can now help me spell words based on sounding them out.  He also loves doing his homework every night.  He usually has a worksheet to practice writing his letters or numbers and then we read a book together and answer some questions about the reading.  He is really starting to pick up some sight words now and sounding out words by knowing the letter sounds.  He calls the letters by their letterland character most of the time, but I am not going
to be too picky at this time if that's what works for him.  He received his first progress report already and got top marks in all areas with phonics and reading, of course, being the areas to concentrate on.  It has been such a relief to have another child who loves school so much.  Let's hope this trend continues! 

For the night before the first day, we were all prepared with our clothes laid out and our backpack ready.  Of course, that is not the case the rest of the year.  He has been taking his lunch every day because I don't want him dealing with going through the lunch line yet.  He can be a slower eater at times so I want him to have plenty of time to eat.  He loved his little love note in his lunch box.  That is definitely his love language.  He picked out the book to read the night before which continues the tradition started with Evan. 

When did this baby get so big?  Holding his chalkboard that he wrote his name on again.

All ready to go.

Trying to do big brother's pose with his foot on the wall.

Big brother was so proud.

And so was little brother.

But Mommy just can't believe how big all of her boys are getting.

Daddy is proud.

Walking to class.

Brody found his class.  This was a staggered start day with just a few kids from each class.  They didn't meet in his classroom this day. 

Brody chose to make some numbers with the cubes as his first morning work.

Showing his number 5.

Little brother wanted to help.

I think I could have left them both here, and they wouldn't have cared.

Working through his numbers.

With no tears, he gave me big hugs and said he was ready for me to leave.  *Sniff*

He only went to school one day his first week and then we went to meet the teacher night to hear about the plans for the year.  Brody had to do a little classroom scavenger hunt including cutting lines on papers.

Checking off his list.

Counting bears.

And building with blocks.

This little calendar is how Brody tracks his daily behavior.  Purple is the highest and this day he earned double purple.  His teacher says he always gets extra credit for actually napping at rest time.  He is one of the only kids who sleeps.  Haha!  He always gets top marks for good behavior just like his big brother, and he has earned his first big reward of getting to eat lunch with his teacher next week.  We hope this is all just a foreshadowing of the good things to come!