Last Day

June 5th, 2013

Dear Jack,

We have just tucked you in for your last night as a kindergartener.  Tomorrow is the last day of school-- for both you and I-- and more so than any year before, I am awestruck at how fast these weeks and months have gone.  It truly does feel like only a moment ago we were snuggling in an anxious, sleepless little barely-five, all of us hoping and fretting about this year of change to come. 

Now here you are, a confident, funny, bold almost-six.  A first grader in just one more day, you will remind me!  A tall boy, lanky and wild; your hair, just cut , begs to be be tousled, your hands are dirty all the time, and you make swords out of anything you can find.  There is barely a trace of my baby boy left in there-- but for the curve of your cheek into your chin, the softness of your sleepy face as you rubbed it into your pillow, receiving my good night wishes with a mumble and a yawn. 

Kindergarten wears you out.   

It has all year, these intense days of learning and play, the navigation of a new social dynamic, the constant need to try new things.  We knew it would hit your hard and it did-- in the fall you were a tired little wreck after school.  You're young, you know, for Kindergarten, with your birthday only a month before the cut-off. Oh how we agonized over our decision to send you on, instead of keeping you one more year at St. Paul's.  

But you were ready.  You've risen to the challenge.  You've toughened up-- in stamina, muscle, emotion.  You've got the energy to play for an hour after school these days, racing and climbing and-- your most-proud new skill-- doing backflips on the monkey bars.  You're trying new things, more confident and willing to take risks-- in your work, your art, swimming, eating dinner.  And you were certainly ready academically--you're reading, writing, doing addition and subtraction, and amazing us every day with new bits of knowledge from Science or Music or Art.  You wont tell us much about school but your enthusiasm when you do speaks volumes for how you feel.

What have you told us?

Well, you love Boulevard, and plan to stay there "forever."

You describe, play by play, just exactly how those backflips are done.

Keeping your paws (the school behavior chart) is very important to you.  So are new pencils, candies, or any other treats that are given out.

You always do your "must-do's" though you can never quite remember what it was you had to to do.  Sometimes, you tell us about what you picked for choice time-- legos, or drawing.  Mrs. Reynolds runs a tight ship so we know you're busy, creating and working on your own or with  your teacher or sometimes with the tutors who come in to help individualize instruction.

 

You love when you get to watch videos on the smartboard.  You are proud of your art projects.  You like when you get to be line leader.  You think your friends-- Maurice, Emmanuel, Steven, Keonte-- are the funniest people in the world.  You think your teachers are great--especially when they give you things!

And what have you learned?

Well, you've learned to call a bum a "booty," and that hitting yourself in the head is a way to make people laugh.   And a variety of other little Kindergarten mannerisms that aren't exactly what we sent you to school to learn-- but that are very important to you!  

You've become quite the social creature.  We weren't sure how that would go, as you've always had a tendency to wait and watch and take a long time to warm up to new situations.  But this year you've come into your own.  You're confident at school, you know your space and your place and your friends.   Kids call out greetings to you as we  pass and you run off to join in games of chase.  Watching you at the Boulevard Blast, standing in line for a game, ticket in hand, chatting with your friends, laughing, encouraging, waiting your turn.... you're learning how to be in the complex dynamic of school and this mama of yours, always plagued by shyness, couldn't be more thrilled.

Besides that:  You can do math facts to 10 in your head (you describe watching the numbers "light up" so you can count them). You can count out a ta-ta-tiri-ta rhythm and carry a bit of a tune.  You know about life cycles and stars and plant parts and rain and... all things science, really.  You did win the prestigious "golden goggle" award for excellence in Kindergarten science, after all!  You can write all your letters and spell some sight words from memory and hear the sounds to spell a lot more. You don't love to write and you still reverse 5, 4, and the letter R, but you're getting there. All of a sudden you are motivated and excited to read.  Not as nervous about it any more, I imagine.  You're reading at a level C-D and you're excited to do summer reading at home and move your level up even more. You love to listen to chapter books-- Deltora Quest is what you and Daddy are reading right now--- and you can keep up with the story now, asking questions and remembering the chapters from day to day.  

You're ready, in other words, for first grade.

Tomorrow, one more day as a Kindergartener. We will take pictures upon pictures because you, and your sweet friends, impossibly large as you all have become-- you will never be this small again.   I won't be there at the end of your school day (how i wish I could be!)  but i can see in my mind your glowing faces, so intensely proud, so full of love and enthusiasm, running out of the school and into summer vacation.   Running head on and full tilt into the future.  I'd like to slow time down, keep you this size, this magic, just a little longer.... but the future calls. 

For tonight, sleep well, Kindergarten Jack.  I love you more than my heart can comprehend. 

Mommy