Kindergarten!

Today was the big first day! Alexis was SO excited for school and all that she would learn. She tried on several outfits (she had one picked out before but nothing looked quite right today) and packed her backpack (with everything that the list she picked up at the store suggested; including boxes of tissues for the class, etc. I convinced her that there would be a class set of markers and crayons and we should keep ours at home for homework so she emptied out a few things). Her teacher was sick today so she had a substitute on the first day! All in all though, things went great. I even benefitted from the misfourtune of my family, who came to visit last week and is stuck here with a broken down truck. This allowed me to go to figure out the school pick-up / drop-off routine without toting the younger two along. That was a huge help today! It was pretty great to have Grandma along for the first day too! And so Alexis' journey through school begins... (we were thrilled to learn last night that she has plans to go to two colleges like her daddy did!) As I lay in my bed the other night thinking about Lexi starting school today, I thought of this poem I'd read years ago. It is so true. We could all benefit from a reminder of the things we learned in kindergarten.


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
sandpile at Sunday 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.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned - the biggest
word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any of those items and extrapolate it into
sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about
three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put thing back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best
to hold hands and stick together.