I have a blogging friend I really appreciate who posts periodically about her mishaps in negotiating parenting kids in school: things like forgetting picture day or failing to order the needed school supplies. I have always read these posts and smiled but not related, until now. Mercy started preschool two weeks ago, and I feel like I am the new kid in class who doesn’t know where to hang my coat or how to sing the opening song.
We started her two weeks into the school year, so all the kids had already brought in all of the supplies needed for the classrooms. Mercy’s teacher gave me a different list of a few general things they still needed, and it has been like a comedy of errors trying to purchase what at first seemed like a harmless little list of supplies. I don’t shop in general, and I have been to Target three times this past week which is remarkable for me, and I still don’t have everything. I am supposed to get little people figures, but everything in the stores is either Disney princesses or Batman figurines or Bratz dolls. Where do you buy regular little people figurines???
Today I dropped Mercy off in a cute little plaid dress in place of her uniform and we carried a little plate of apple tarts I made late last night. It was “Multiculture Day” and we did our best to work with our small amount of Irish heritage and come up with food and clothing that could represent this somehow. As we stepped out of the van and started walking toward the classroom building, my friend whose daughter also attends came running over: “It was yesterday!” she said, apologetically.
Apparently, she had heard the information incorrectly about when the day was and she had been the one to communicate with me since she had picked Mercy up on Monday. So our two little slightly Irish girls stood out a bit more today, and both of their classes had a little extra snack to eat. Oh well…
A teaching supply store is a good place to get non-licensed products like the figurines.
We haven’t hit preschool yet, but I’m sure I will be just as off-track when it comes. Hopefully practice makes perfect?
It’s a whole new kind of pressure, isn’t it?
It’s humbling, isn’t it? With a steep learning curve.
Keep laughing and you’ll be okay! 🙂
I completely and totally empathize!! I was like you when L was in pre-school. It was as if people were speaking King James English all the time … I understood just enough to be completely off balance. No worries though, you’ll get there.
Try Staples for some people figurines and other school supplies. They have a teachers section. The other suggestion of a teachers supply store was also very good, but they can be difficult to find.
Hopefully, you won’t get inundated with fundraising the whole year…popcorn, books, cookie dough, fall festival, candles, etc., etc. And this is in our Public school. Couldn’t they just say, hey, we need $$$ from each family and let us do it that way?
school supplies – my wife made 4 runs to the store because BOTH our daughter’s teachers changed their list from the list on the school’s website…yeah!
John,
Doug and I just attended our first all-school parent meeting and, you guessed it, we spent a LOT of time learning about fundraisers 🙂