Practice Practice Practice
Boy is next week going to hit us like a ton of bricks! Our daily routines are going to be changing quite a bit and man oh man can we tell. The kids are all just going nuts, and not in a good way. I'm sure they all are anticipating the up coming changes.
In the meantime we are doing our best to prepare. Ha, actually we are doing our best to remain grounded as we prepare. I'm not so sure we are succeeding at remaining grounded! Among many things, we are working on bedtime routines, morning routines, and lunch time routines.
Getting back into a decent bedtime hour and wakeup time is our most challenging task. We are headed in the right direction, but it will still be a shock to our system Monday morning. The "good morning button" is working for now, but I'm not sure how long that will last!
During lunch time Carie has been setting the timer to gauge how well they can do with eating their meal within the allotted 20 minutes. Thankfully in the beginning things will be a bit more fluid as they work at getting into the grove at school! Unfortunately there won't be a "timer" at school. One of our concerns is that they'll sit and zone out the entire lunch period as food and eating just isn't an important task for them. Except it greatly impacts their mood and ability to focus! But, much to our surprise they are doing fantastic! When the timer goes off they know that lunch time at school will be over and they evaluate what they have left and how their tummies are feeling. They have also been paying close attention to afternoon snacking to get into the routine of waiting until school is out.
We've also been evaluating their requests and encouraging independence where appropriate. We've been practicing opening containers, including milk cartons. Boy those were hard to find! As a balance to this, we talk about times or situations where it is a great idea to ask for help and who to go to for help. They both are on the shy side and we want them to feel okay or good about speaking up and asking for what they need. They certainly have no problem doing so at home!
In the meantime we are doing our best to prepare. Ha, actually we are doing our best to remain grounded as we prepare. I'm not so sure we are succeeding at remaining grounded! Among many things, we are working on bedtime routines, morning routines, and lunch time routines.
Getting back into a decent bedtime hour and wakeup time is our most challenging task. We are headed in the right direction, but it will still be a shock to our system Monday morning. The "good morning button" is working for now, but I'm not sure how long that will last!
During lunch time Carie has been setting the timer to gauge how well they can do with eating their meal within the allotted 20 minutes. Thankfully in the beginning things will be a bit more fluid as they work at getting into the grove at school! Unfortunately there won't be a "timer" at school. One of our concerns is that they'll sit and zone out the entire lunch period as food and eating just isn't an important task for them. Except it greatly impacts their mood and ability to focus! But, much to our surprise they are doing fantastic! When the timer goes off they know that lunch time at school will be over and they evaluate what they have left and how their tummies are feeling. They have also been paying close attention to afternoon snacking to get into the routine of waiting until school is out.
We've also been evaluating their requests and encouraging independence where appropriate. We've been practicing opening containers, including milk cartons. Boy those were hard to find! As a balance to this, we talk about times or situations where it is a great idea to ask for help and who to go to for help. They both are on the shy side and we want them to feel okay or good about speaking up and asking for what they need. They certainly have no problem doing so at home!
Labels: Kindergarten, School, The Girls
posted by Sonya at 5:55 PM
5 Comments:
Sounds like you're doing a great job at preparing them. What a big change! I can remember being a kid and having to start going to bed earlier at the end of summer. I hated it!
good luck for next week I will send organised thoughts your way, 3 weeks into the term harriet seems to be finally resettled although today she had only eaten 1 thing from her lunchbox...she was not pretty at 3pm when I picked her up, we have had a wee talk about needing energy more than playtime LOL
Sounds like they are going to be very prepared. It's always a big change, I guess. Best of luck!
Oh my goodness, so much I hadn't thought of! Now I'm going to have to panic early! :)
Good luck!! In Brendan's class in pre-K they wouldn't let the kids go out to run around at lunch until they finished their lunch and the dawdlers didn't like to miss out so they tended to eat. Of course then there were the times that the kids would just not want to eat so they could go and play and they started making those kids wait up too.
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