Speaking of schooling...

Ben started kindergarten today. Ginny and I have very different feelings about it. Ginny has had Ben staying at home with her for the last five years, and she's undergone some separation anxiety. She's worried about whether he'll adapt to the new environment, whether he'll behave, whether he'll eat well when he's not at home, and whether he'll be homesick.

I have different feelings about it: I'm really excited. Of course that's easy for me to say: I work all day, and I'm used to not having him constantly there anyway. So I mostly only see the good side of this new milestone in his life. I mentioned most of the reasons for my positive feelings in my earlier post about homeschooling. He'll be expanding his horizons, meeting lots of kids his own age, having a teacher with a different perspective on the world than ours. He'll spend time learning to read and draw and use numbers (which he's already very good at for his age). He'll have his time divided between two very different environments, and have raised expectations about how he spends the weekdays.

I met his teacher and some classmates last week. They all seem great. Mrs. Snyder struck me as a very cheerful and sweet young lady with a lot of teaching experience. We watched him go in this morning, and she took charge of the class right away.

I talked to him on the phone when Ginny picked him up. He sounded very tired but said he had had lots of fun. He couldn't be even a little bit specific about what kind of fun, so I had to pry it out of him with leading questions. :) But overall, I think it was a positive experience.