New school year underway

The new school year started Monday and so far the week has gone pretty well. It hasn't been as hard as last year for me to wake up early, and I have been going to bed earlier too. The first day of school, I drove my daughter in to help carry all her supplies and to make sure she knew where her new classroom was. Of course, she wanted to play on the playground before the bell rang, so we went outside. The first thing I noticed was a new "carousel" playground equipment out there. All the kids wanted to ride it at once and as a result, there were about 25 kids on it. They were spinning much to fast and a few kids fell off and rolled under while it kept spinning. One had to go to the nurse and I was wondering why the two teachers that were supervising didn't limit the number of children riding at once.

Then, when my daughter came home from school that first day, she was limping. I asked what was wrong and she told me that she flew off the carousel and hurt her ankle. She said there were so many kids on it that she didn't have a place to hold on, but she rode it anyway and several kids were thrown from the ride and got hurt. I called the principal and he said he would be instigating rules for the ride and instructing the teachers to supervise it very carefully for the first couple of weeks until the "newness" wares off and the kids go back to playing on the other playground equipment also.

Other than that, my daughter loves her new first grade teacher and she is doing very well with her homework. She had homework every day in pre-school when we lived in Colorado, then her Kindergarten teacher here in Eureka Springs didn't give any homework at all. Now in first grade, she has homework every day again. When she comes home, she is starving since lunch is around 11:00 and there are no afternoon snacks in first grade. So I let her have a snack, then we work on homework before dinner time. Our schedule is working out pretty well and she has been sleeping a little better at night since school started. Monday is parent back-to-school night so we will get to talk to her teacher more and follow up with some questions we have.