it's not you, it's me

The kindergarten transition has been a bit rough on me.  Over the last four weeks, I was convinced that school and the new schedule had ruined Bryce.  I just noticed him being more whiny about everything.  The mornings haven't been too bad, but the afternoons have been dreadful.  After a bit of reflection and much prayer, I have a new perspective this week.  We're two days into this new week and I'm pretty sure the issue has been me all along, not Bryce!

 

 

Bryce got a set of knight figurines from Dennis and Veronica when he was in town for Nanny's birthday and Bryce is really enjoying them.  Sunday night he asked me if he could make a castle for a backdrop for his knights when he played.  It was too close to bedtime so I told him he could do it after school on Monday.  He apparently looked forward to it all day and couldn't wait to get started when he got home!

 

Once he started playing, he decided it needed a drawbridge.  He made one and then later that night we added some dental floss so it could actually go up and down.  He enjoyed playing with it today after school too!

 

Bryce brings home new sight word flash cards each week to add to a ring of cards.  We have been practicing sight words at home for the past year so we already have all the words on our own cards.  I decided instead of reading through all the cards, it would be more fun to play games with them.  Since we now have two sets of the words, we played memory with them.  He really enjoyed this!

 

It's a match!

 

Since Monday went so well, we kept the after school momentum going today with a coloring picture he had saved out for today and then we made a BINGO game with his sight words.  Tomorrow we have box tops to cut and glue and a new puzzle from Nanny to start.  It's hard to accept when you're the problem, but I can admit that I was just tired by the time Bryce was getting home and too lazy to be creative.  I was hoping he would wind down each day with a cartoon and then play, but the lack of structure was causing the majority of the issues!  I'm sad it took me four weeks to get to this point, but now that we're here, I'm feeling a lot better about kindergarten and school in general.