***Not to be confused with what Sophie has learned thus far in Kindergarten 3.0

1. At school today a boy tried to pick up Sophie and lick her. I can’t get the picture out of my mind of a boy picking her up and trying to lick her like a lollipop. The boy is a Kindergartner, not a big kid. He’s in her class. He got his name moved on the discipline chart after Sophie told the teacher. ***No one was harmed or successfully licked in this situation.

2. Sophie “sound spells” her last name “Gunfr”. That cracks me up. When I pronounce it this way she gets sarcastic and asks me why I keep saying it that way.

3. Five minutes of Kindergarten homework can be very stressful for both parent and child. Apparently writing your name once without the letters floating happily where you choose in between the dotted and solid lines is way hard especially when you want to play with your friend.

4. Sophie has a new “calming down” technique that she does during the five minutes of stressful Kindergarten homework. She holds her thumbs and forefingers together at face level and lowers them slowly while exhaling deeply. As long as she doesn’t start chanting, “ohhmmmmmm,” I’m fine with it. Breathing correctly is an important thing to learn. Her breathing/finger holding, however, did not help me calm down.

5. A little girl in Sophie’s class smacks at lunch. Imagine that. Sophie tried to “tell her” but she wouldn’t listen. I have a video clip of Sophie smacking from tonight. I can’t be sure if this is why the little girl wouldn’t listen to Sophie. We all know that bossing your new classmates is so effective.

6.There’s a little girl in Sophie’s class with the same name as Cooper’s “ex-girlfriend”. When Sophie mentioned this “ex-girlfriend” of Cooper’s {Cooper, the one Sophie considers her “ex-boyfriend”} I asked her how she knew this and she said, “they’re split up. He told me about the split up and then he asked me and I said, ‘no, I can’t.” Just to clarify I asked her if Cooper asked her to be his girlfriend {yet again} and she said, “yes.” I then confirmed that she responded with a, “no, I can’t,” because she is too young for a boyfriend. She said, “yes.” Progress since preschool.

7. I’m not as smart as a Kindergartner. In the words of Sophie, “Mom, you’re not so bright. But you’re so, so pretty.”

8. Our parenting skills need help. In response to Joe telling Sophie that she needed to calm down and that she was blowing it {ice cream treat at school on Friday for reward for good behavior at school and home}, she said, “y’all are blowing it from being Mom and Dad.”

9. Science is way more fun than I remember. Sophie’s class looked at rocks through a magnifying glass and learned that insects come from worms that turn into butterflies.

10. I didn’t have to call the school like Joe to ensure my child would get home safely off the bus. And Sophie didn’t get stopped by the cops for not wearing a seat belt on the bus. {That last part would be what Sophie learned in Kindergarten 3.0.}