First Day Of First Grade

Today was the first day back to school for my daughter. She is a first grader this year! I can't believe how fast she is growing up! She'll be 7 on her next birthday! My little guy is growing up too fast too! He'll be 2 on his next birthday!

I walked my daughter to and from school today which is how she gets to school when the weather permits. SO much easier than trying to deal with all the traffic of cars lining up all down the road! When I got her from school I asked her how her first day was. She told me it was great! I was so glad to hear that because when I left her this morning she looked a bit uneasy like she wasn't really sure about it. I think it was just because it was a whole new room, new teacher, and almost all new classmates. There were about three or four familiar names from her Kindergarten class and she said she knew some of the other kids too. I know she will adjust just fine! No worries there at all!

When I asked her about if she got all her school supplies put away she told me she did. I am a bit annoyed about what she said they did with the school supplies though so I am going to be asking the teacher about it in the morning. My daughter said that the only school supplies that she kept in her school box for herself to use was her pair of scissors and her large pink erasers.

Now scissors and erasers are not the only school supplies we had to take. We had to take a package of markers, a package of white construction paper, a package of colored construction paper, two boxes of crayons, a bottle of glue, twelve pencils, and two boxes of kleenex. We also took a few bottles of hand sanitizer that were not required but appreciated by the teacher.

So according to my daughter ALL of her school supplies are shared except for her scissors, pink erasers, and her school box. Now maybe it's just me and I'm being selfish here but this kind of bothers me. We got our daughter "good" school supplies not any store brand things. Not that store brand is bad. Don't get me wrong! We are usually ALL about buying the store brand items to save on money but if I'm going to be spending the extra to buy the "good" stuff for my daughter for school then I want to be sure SHE is getting to use them, you know? Not having to use a store brand. Obviously, they would all work basically the same although there is a pretty big difference between Crayola crayons and the "cheap" ones, but that isn't the point here. The point is we bought them for our daughter, not for her whole class.

Plus, if they are all going to share EVERYTHING then technically there could be some kids that don't even bring anything but yet still have school supplies. How fair is that to the parent's of the kids who spend money to get their kids what they need? I don't know, maybe the teacher makes sure they ALL bring what they are suppose to? I have no way of knowing that.

My hubby brought up a good point too. What if one kid breaks his pencil tip a lot and sharpens his pencil over and over again thus using all twelve of the pencils he brought before the school year is over. In all actuality, it should be his parent's responsibility to purchase more pencils for him but if the whole class is sharing everything then I'm thinking he would not furnish anymore but use the other pencils that the other kids had brought. So in a sense, someone else could be paying for another kid's school supplies if this sort of scenario happened.

Now don't get me wrong. I am all for teaching my kids to share but when money is tight and times are tough I just don't like the idea of my daughter not using her "own" things that when we purchased them we thought SHE would be the only one using them.

I'm going to inquire more about this in the morning when I take my daughter to school. Just because I am really curious. This morning when I took her I mentioned to the teacher that I had written my daughter's name on everything and that I wasn't sure we were suppose to or not? She said that was great because otherwise she would have had to do so. If they are all going to share then why would they need their name on it all? Maybe my daughter misunderstood? I have no clue but will definitely be finding out!