Starting Kindergarten is an Adventure, So Have Fun!

I’ve always liked the essay, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. 

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

There’s more to the poem, but this is my blog, not Dr. Fulghum’s, so you can look up the rest.

Recently Patch asked me to send them a photo of me as a child. I sent my official Kindergarten picture. I remember that picture very well. I had just had my hair cut very short and was not happy with the outcome or the reason why I had to have it cut. I started out Kindergarten with thick, flowing, wavy hair that fell to below my waist. But there was an outbreak of head lice that year and several of the girls in my class had to have our hair cut short. In those days we didn’t have the benefit of the shampoos and treatments that are available today. I remember endless days of having my mother go through my hair with a “fine-toothed comb” hair by hair removing the little nits. It was terrible!

Kindergarten for me was quite the adventure. It was my first time out of the house – I didn’t go to pre-school – without my little brothers, and I couldn’t wait! I wasn’t too worried about the academics. I was already reading 2^nd grade storybooks. I was a little shy, though, and a bit awkward. I remember that I could color between the lines, but I just could not understand why Sister Rebello insisted that I move the crayon in only one direction. What was the difference as long as I stayed between the lines? I still don’t know the answer to that.

I remember that on my first day of school, we had to line up in the playground at St. Elizabeth’s. My mother nudged me to join a little girl who had beautiful long braids. As her mother pushed the little girl’s hand into mine, I remember asking my new friend when her birthday was. When she said, February 10^th, I had to exclaim, “That’s my birthday!” To this day, Mary Lou (Correia) Palumbo is still a good friend, though we don’t see each other very much. Surely finding a birthday twin on my first day of school was a sign of good things to come. 

So here is my wish to all the Kindergartners who are starting school this year: “Have a great year. Enjoy the adventure. It’s definitely the start of many good things to come!”