School's cool....I promise!

Synopsys of first day at school for intro period......
- Ben thought it would be nice of him to eat a classmate's banana. No sharing.....same story with a juice box.

Second day at Goddard for "intro period" - hmmm, i guess better.... The theme of these past two days has been REBELLION.

I took him this morning for the tail end of snack time. The scheduled activity after snack time is circle time/music then playing with toys. The first thing he noticed when we came in was the shelf of trucks and cars, strategically located right at the door. Need I say more? Re-directing his attention from that was a feat....eventually he figured out I was not going to let him play with the toys. I kept saying "later" and he kept stomping his feet, crying, screaming and pointing at the cars. The kids in the room were very entertained...they all looked at him like "what's his problem?" - I have to say that they all sat at the snack table very quietly and just ate their snacks.....sure didn't look like fun to me either! ;-)

One particular kid kept looking at Ben with a certain admiration like he was thinking "man, you're a rebel!" ....After snack time, all the kids got up and neatly took their cups and trays to the trash can and dumped them in, to their teacher's praise. Ben picked up his empty cup and threw it across the room....that happened three times before i picked it up and decided to walk him and the cup over to the trash can, where he threw (yes, threw) it in, and celebrated with a scream and both arms in the air.....hmmm, guess playing clean up by having him throw his toys in the basket from across the room is going to back fire.....

Then it was circle time.....all the kids, again, sat quietly on a shape on the rug and crossed their legs while the teacher read out loud who was in class today and each kid picked up their "hand" cut out labeled with their names, and placed it on the velcro "attendance board" - when it was Benjamin's turn, he politely turned down the opportunity to post his on the velcro board by not standing up at all.

Next was a song game, for which they stood up and Benjamin sat. Nonetheless, he earned himself a stamp for good listening - he protested this accomplishment with cries and screams, further engraving into his classmates' minds that he's the rebel among them. He rubbed the stamp, but the darn thing didn't come off - it's like the scarlet letter for the rebel in my son.

And then it was, finally, time to play with cars....but by then he didn't want to play with cars at all. Obviously, we had made him wait too long. So, of course, the next obvious choice was to head for the door....he kept rubbing his hands together signing "ALL DONE" and I kept saying "not yet" -- so he reluctantly played with a few cars, and semi-made friends with one of his classmates.

We left after a little while of playing, when I opened the door he ran past me to the hallway and proceeded to do the happy dance all the way out the door. Hmmm, think he's trying to tell us something??