(no subject)

[the_rck]

Today was the first day of school for Delia. She's in fourth grade. Her class this year is fairly large, twenty-nine kids at last report. The fifth grade has twenty-eight kids. The school hoped to have three classes, a 4th, a 5th and a 4/5 split, but the district said no. Parents are trying to organize in hopes of persuading the district to relent, but I don't think it will work. If one of the classes had more than thirty kids, we'd stand a good chance-- The school has thirty laptops to be shared by the third, fourth and fifth grades, and the special classes, like art, music and library, are set up for a maximum of thirty kids (the library has laptops, too, and far less time for using them, so sharing between kids isn't a good option). Last year, one of the classes had thirty-five kids, so parents had a much easier time convincing the district to allow a third teacher. This year, given budget cuts, I suspect they'll hold out on us.

Delia commented that it's weird to see the kids who were second graders last year as third graders this year. I think this has to do with where the classrooms are located-- The kindergarteners are in one wing, the first and second grades are in another, and third through fifth grade is in still a third wing. It may also have to do with who has lunch when. I think third grade is a division point, but I'm not sure whether the younger kids play first and then eat or eat first and then play.

We had our niece over for two nights last week. She stayed Thursday and Friday nights. She's a year and a half older than Delia, and the two of them like to play together. I didn't have to fuss much over them. They kept each other entertained. The main difficulty was that Cottage Inn messed up our order on Thursday. Our niece likes pizza with sauce and cheese only (Delia and I both eat sauceless pizza). Scott ordered a pizza half just cheese and half chicken and broccoli. We ended up with a pizza entirely chicken and broccoli. Our niece ate it because she's polite, but she wasn't happy.

Scott had the whole weekend off. He's a little annoyed by how little he got done, but it was a last hurrah for summer. We spent Saturday with his family. Everybody but me and the dog went out on his parents' boat. The kids collected rocks that they painted and then sold to the adults. I'm glad that Scott's sister's dog is mellow. He was content to leave me alone through the afternoon. I think he mostly slept.

Sunday, Scott played golf with his father. It was a game he'd promised his father back in May (as a birthday present). After the game, Scott, Delia and I went out to dinner at the Flattop Grill. That's a place where one fills a bowl with ingredients for a stir fry. They have little markers to indicate if one has allergies, and they cook meals so marked in clean woks instead of on the large grill.

Monday, Scott took Delia and cherydactyl's younger daughter to the Saline Fair. It was the last day, and they had a special deal letting people buy a $10 armband that lets the owner ride all the rides except the pony ride as many times as he or she wants. After they got back from the fair, we ate leftovers and tried to do some work on the anti-anxiety program. Delia had a little bit of a meltdown over how hard it is. She says it's making her worry more by making her think about her worries at times when she's not worried.

We're going to try again with the anti-anxiety program after soccer practice tonight (that's where Scott and Delia are right now). We'll have half an hour for that. Hopefully, Delia will cooperate. This can't be something we do to her. She has to choose to participate, or it won't help. We did agree to a reward for her (it's part of the program to build in rewards for each small step)-- We bought cupcakes (Hello Kitty cupcakes!) Sunday night. She'll get one tonight if she does one exercise in detective thinking. I think we under-estimated how disruptive having our niece over would be to the program. That made four nights last week when we didn't do it. Getting back into it is hard.

Comments

[chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

wow, when I was in school all classes had at MINIMUM at least 35 kids in them, study halls often had as many as 70. it's good to hear they have changed that.

[the_rck]

We've gotten used to smaller classes. The last couple of years, there's been about forty kids in Delia's grade, too many to fit in one classroom. Our school includes the local university's graduate student housing, so kids regularly move away. The student population decreases as the kids get older (the grad students are more likely to have kindergartners than fifth graders).

I'm surprised you could fit that many kids in a classroom. Last year, when they briefly had thirty-five kids in one class, they couldn't fit enough desks into the room to seat them all.

[chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

keep in mind I was at the end of the baby boomer generation, and yeah, we couldn't cram enough desks in a room, study hall was held in teh cafeteria and in some classrooms some students sat on the floor along the back wall or on the floor under the chalfboard. (that sucked, you wound up with chalk dust on you)