Owen starts school!

Owen misses the cut-off date here for kindergarten by 20 days. The school district runs a free program called Transitional Kindergarten (TK) for the kids whose fall birthdays just miss the cut-off. It's run by a regular school teacher at the school where he would attend kindergarten, in a regular classroom... so basically, it's like doing 2 years of kindergarten. It's free, though (which preschool around here most definitely is not), and all his primary friends are starting kindergarten, so we decided to put Owen in TK. He LOVES it so far. He has lots of little friends, he really likes his teacher, and they have done a lot of really cute activities. It's low-stress, because it's not a required grade, so there's really no set curriculum. It's basically just learning how to be at school and interact with people. They sing lots of songs, do lots of crafts, learn about the days/seasons/numbers/letters, they have plenty of play time both inside and outside, they spend time reading with buddies in the library.... they even learned about different types of apples, had a taste-test, and then made apple pies with their favorite apples!

Yes, full disclosure, I cried the first day I took Owen in (but not till I got back to the car!), and he was pretty worried as well. But now we both do better (although Nora cries almost every day when we leave Owen). I enjoy getting a few hours with just Nora in the morning.

These pictures are from Owen's first day of school.

We let him pick out any backpack he wanted... we figured that there are only a few years that you can get away with having a Mike Wazowski backpack. :)

Ready to go.... if only mom would stop taking pictures. 

Nora wants in on the action.

Hanging up his backpack!

He has his own little kit and nametag and everything!

Nora thinks she's a big girl too.