Week one

The kids have finished their first week. Amelia is having a great time. On wednesday she was certified to use the vacuum cleaner, on thursday she was certified to use scissors and pencils and on friday she was certified to use watercolors. She went to her first school meeting on thursday and was excited to learn that next week she can make a motion to go to the yellow boundary(the school has three levels of boundaries outside, orange, yellow and blue. Orange is for new students and visitors, yellow is about 30 feet past orange and you have to be attending the school for at least two weeks,or attend two meetings,I'm not sure, for blue you have to be able to tell time and you have to be with another person who is certified for blue). She voted on something, we're not sure what, and made a sign for her cubby. She also played on the computer, which she was happily surprised to discover that you don't need to be certified to use. She did call twice, once because she fell and hurt her knee and once because I had changed the pick up time and she wanted to know why. The school is open from 8:30 to 4:30 and the only attendance requirement is that at age 6 they have to go for 5 hours a day and at age 12 they have to be there for 51/2 hours a day. It's great.

If I didn't ask more questions and if Amelia didn't happily fill in the gaps, the only thing I would know about Desmond's day is that he often forgets to eat. He pretty much has had the same experiences as Amelia but he approached his first cleaning assignment with considerably less gusto. I had a hard time figuring out the story but apparently he was either supposed to sweep the porch or he thought he was supposed to sweep the porch but he wasn't sure how, so he hid for anywhere from 1 to 6 hours before someone either told him it wasn't his job or that he should do the best he could. We had a talk about how if he had asked for help in the first place it would have been cleared up but I suspect that this will be a regular problem for Des because he doesn't like to help. and he freely admits this. One of my hopes for Des at sudbury was that he would come to accept that he is going to have to contribute to the welfare of whatever community he is a part of, that it's not just mommy and daddy who expect that of him.

We'll see.