A visit to The Big House

No, not jail. And not the University of Michigan's stadium either.

The other big house.

Kindergarten.

Claire even woke up nervous - a visit to her future school home for a tour and information session. Next year is the big kindergarten entrance, and the school had a great program to try to make the transition easier on the entering class.

The morning started in the cafeteria and a trip through the lunch line for some goldfish and apple juice to keep the little ones occupied while the school administrators bombarded the parents with information. Claire felt immediately at ease with the smell of tacos wafting through the food prep area - all I could think about was the cnn.com article about how under-nourished our school lunch programs are.

We took a seat at a table and I missed the first 10 minutes of the Principal's opening comments while I stared at the district calendar that was passed out. 17 days. From August until December they are out of school for 17 days - more then my entire year's worth of vacation. I go into math mode calculating babysitter costs, vacation splits and grandparent availability. Because I have to relate everything to a math problem, I see that there are 100 days of school from August until December. So, 17% of those days are not spent in school. Realizing that I could easily tailspin into these thoughts for a good hour or two, I cleared my head and focused back onto the topics being presented: dress codes, whether peanut butter is allowed and the speech from the school nurses on the proper way to bring medications to school.

After the intro's we started on the school tour - our group was headed by the outgoing PTA president and her incoming replacement. She showed us a real kindergarten class in progress, the media center (what I knew as the "library"), the science lab and the art room. Everything was brand new and the kids and teachers all looked engaged. Finally the highlight of the tour game - the practice bus boarding while the parents watched in 90 degree heat.

Claire seemed ready to make the leap to kindergarten, and her teachers sighed at the end of the day that she did chatter about her big kindergarten visit for the rest of the day.