Parade

We take what we can from the public school system. First it's music/art/PE, now it's the homecoming parade. Since our high school feeds from five different towns, there isn't an official homecoming parade. Our little town had an elementary parade instead. It was quite cute. They had a police car followed by all 30ish 4th graders, a fire truck, 30ish 3rd graders, a truck of senior citizens, 30ish 2nd graders, 25 first graders, and 20ish kindergarteners. Pretty quick. The parade starts at the grocery store, goes up main street, and ends at the courthouse. There they have a pep rally which is really a few songs by the band and a few yells. Our kids walked with their respective classes and had a blast. Here are the kindergarteners. Jonah is in the second group. He's the blond head next to the boy with the hat. Jonah shared his hat with his little friend Ty. Here are the 2nd graders. Anna is wearing the white hat in the middle. The art/music/PE things is going fine. We laugh at how inefficient everything is. Jonah's been working on a train picture for two art classes. That's 80 minutes of time. The teacher decided they were all making trains, and she decided what color the trains were. I'm not sure what Jonah is getting to do. At least he's happy because he was assigned the color blue. After each art class, Anna has come back to report on the discipline system in the room. I'm not sure that the teacher teaches since I haven't heard any reports of actual art lessons. She has some system where they get points for attending class and then she deducts points for behavior issues. This teacher assigns jobs for the students. One student gets to be the monitor whose job it is to tell other kids to be quiet. If someone is talking, you report that kid to the monitor. The monitor tells that kid to be quiet three times and then the monitor takes it to the teacher. Then, I suppose you get points deducted. I'm thinking - there are 17 kids in the classroom and 2 adults. Surely those 2 adults can keep discipline for 40 minutes without needing assistance from a 7yo? I'm a little torked that she would waste Anna's 40 minutes by making her the disciplinarian for the day. I don't take Anna there to tell other kids to be quiet. I want Anna to work on art projects!!! So, we may have an issue in the near future.

Oh, well. It's all an experiment. I had hoped that the kids would learn something from their time in the public school, but it might just be about becoming familiar faces to the other kids.

I should report, though, that PE has been a great class so far. Well, except for the 40 minute class period they spent weighing and measuring everyone. That was a waste of our day for sure.

The kids love going every day. Their favorite part is walking in line.