max’s first school visit

Max had his first school visit today!  At our local primary school the new entrants have three visits to the school prior to starting, each about two hours long.Max was a wee bit nervous walking up the driveway to school but once he saw some faces he recognised he was just fine.

The first one is where the parents stay and the wee ones are shown around the parts of the school they’ll be using.  In saying that the kids were whisked off after five minutes today while the parents stayed in the teachers common room and spent an hour going the all manner of things such as the timetable they’ll be following, how everything is organised, what to expect etc.  The group of kids that are starting on the same day (Feb 7th – first day back after the Christmas break) number about 10-12 and he already knew about half of them which should make things a bit easier.
Anyway, after they’d been taken away and we had all been told what to expect we had our own tour of the place and ended up at the same place the kids were.  Max was quite happily sitting on the steps of the classroom having a snack with a friend of his, Freddy, who is already at school  and a new friend Lochlan.  The parents then went into one of the classroom for a cuppa and left all the kids playing outside.  The bell for class rang and after a couple of minutes I wandered outside to see where Max was.  After a few minutes of hunting I discovered that he’d gone into Freddy’s classroom and was getting ready to sit down!  Hopefully after another couple of visits he’ll be feeling even more comfortable and the transition from kindy to school shouldn’t be too abrupt.  The funny thing was as I was leading him back to the car he pulls on my arm and says “Daddy, when the bell rings that means that you have to go back to you classroom”

First visit and he already has one of the big rules sorted 🙂

Max has two more visits so that all parts of the day is covered. This first one was 09:30-11:30 to cover the morning break and the next two cover lunchtime and then the end of school.  Parents are optional at the second one and then actively discouraged from staying for the third visit 🙂

He sure is growing up 🙁