Socially it's a little bit of a struggle, but she's getting to know some of the girls and making a few friends. Mostly she's been playing with her friend, Taylor (who is in another class, but they have lunch and recess together), but Taylor had to miss a couple of days last week, so she found some other girls to play with those days, and it sounds like she and Taylor are playing with some other girls, too, so I'm happy that she's not just sticking to Taylor's side.
Last night was curriculum night, where I heard about what third grade will be like. There's more homework (not looking forward to that....she already had a lot in second grade!) but I'm happy to hear that there are weekly spelling tests (they didn't learn spelling in second grade, which bothered me) and that her teacher is a stickler for neat handwriting (they'll be learning cursive this year--a practice most schools around here are phasing out, so I'm happy Rachel will have to learn it!).
My biggest qualm about this whole thing is the bus. She doesn't get home until 30-45 minutes after when she used to get home--the bus was really late all last week, but it's been a little better this week, so it's more like 30 this week. By the time she gets home and tells me a little about her day, she has about 10 minutes to play, and then it's dinner time. Then homework time. Then a little playtime, then bedtime. And extra curricular stuff hasn't even started yet! I don't know what we'll do when she has Girl Scouts or something--I think I'm definitely going to have to pick her up from school on those days, but that means a trip up to her school (40 minutes, round trip), dinner, then a trip back up into the same town for the evening activity (another 40 minutes round trip). That's a lot of driving! We talk sometimes about moving closer to where her school is, but that would lengthen my husband's commute quite a bit (and he already drives 50 minutes ONE WAY every day for work!), plus property taxes are a lot higher up there. So I kind of doubt that will happen, unless he'd get a new job (and he did apply for one he saw, but nothing ever came of it, and positions like his don't seem to come up a lot).
But she's happy and loving life, so I'll put up with the bus situation. On Saturday she was sad that she couldn't go to school!
In other news, I don't think I've written about the fact that I'm going to be a preschool teacher this year!? It's a long story, but I decided not to go back to where I taught last year, and then this preschool opening came up where Rebecca is going to school this year. They were willing to take me with only elementary experience, not preschool experience, so I'm giving it a try. I'm only teaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the same two days Rebecca will be at school, so it works out well. I'm still just "Mommy" the rest of the week.
I have a partner teacher (also new to the school, so we're the blind leading the blind--though she has at least taught preschool before!) and we'll have 12 little three year olds in our care. Yikes!
So Rebecca and I have been spending many of our mornings at the preschool, getting ready for the start of school (Sept 4 is the first day, so it's coming up fast!). She can't wait for school to start (she asks me every morning, "Is TODAY my first day of school?") I'm a little more reluctant. I'm anxious to get into the swing of things and figure things out, but I'm also worried about how I'll do and whether I'll like it. Everyone else seems to have more confidence in my and my abilities than I have in myself.
