First Day of Junior Kindergarten (Pre-K) Bento!

My little girl's first day of her last year of preschool! *sniffle*

Even though we had no morning plans, so I didn't *neeeeeed* to pack a lunch, I couldn't let this milestone go uncelebrated!

Junior Kindergarten Choo-Choo-Champion

Green beans and carrot flowers w/Ranch, apples and raspberries, CoJack cheese, WowButter-honey sandwich,
Chobani Champions Orange Vanilla Greek Yogurt

I chose the train shape because that's her school's logo. I used a Gemco train ice cream sandwich mold found for me in Mexico of all places, by my friend Lau-Raw at El Lunch de mi Enano. (She also got me the car and flower ones!)

I used my new letter cookie cutters to do the JK initials for her Junior Kindergarten class.

For "dessert" she got a Chobani Champions Orange Vanilla Greek Yogurt. I love that these kid-friendly flavors are free from the artificial ingredients that she can't have, and are still fun and yummy enough to appeal to her. I packed a spoon (Dollar Tree, baby section) but she really only used her Cool Straw.

Mama's Rainbow Lunch

1/2 Biscoff sandwich on whole wheat, organic cherry tomatoes, cheese scraps,
Chobani Champions Verry Berry Greek yogurt and Blueberry Flax Seed Granola;
red lettuce salad w/yellow and orange carrots, zucchini, assorted raisins, nutritional yeast and almonds, dressing

I had red tomatoes and lettuce tips (and berries in the yogurt,) orange/yellow tomatoes, carrots and raisins, green lettuce and zucchini, and blue/purple dried blueberries (and in the yogurt,) and raisins.

My salad got all the carrot scraps from hand-cutting Vs into her carrot coins, and I got the scraps from her cheese letters too. Her train sandwich took up just over half a slice of bread for each side, so I couldn't just use one slice. My sandwich is made from the remaining almost-half.

The Biscoff sandwich was my dessert. Yum! My granola is in a small Tupperware container I bought at a Tupperware vendor booth at a local street fair. The little blue dressing container is a Smidget, and the pink one came in a set with assorted sizes from an Asian grocery.

I didn't end up getting to eat my lunch until Z was at school, so Baby and I had time to enjoy some #chobanitime together! I mixed some of my yogurt in with her Chard-Plum "Baby Chum." And since she was just wearing her diaper and a bib, I let her explore her food and practice feeding herself. She gave up on the spoon fairly quickly, but did a bang-up job sucking food off her hands!

First Day of School

We were 10-minutes late. A... realistic start to the new school year!

Z's preschool has two different programs for 4-year-olds. There's Pre-K, and another program aimed at the older kids, called Junior-K. It's designed for kids turning 5 by February, as well as kids delaying starting Kindergarten by a year due to Summer birthdays. I think this is a great idea, since anyone planning to delay entry to Kindergarten can have their child do both, without having to repeat the same class for a second year.

In JK, they start their reading program in November, right after Thanksgiving. In Pre-K, they don't start until Spring. Since Z has been able to sound out words for a while now (although she refuses to do it when asked,) I looked into doing the JK program for her. I was worried that she might not thrive there, since with a June birthday, she'd be 4 to 12 months younger than all the other kids. And she has a few sensory/social issues. And on top of getting two completely new teachers and moving to the other classroom, only one or two students from her class were going to JK as well. This past school year was the first time in her three years at preschool where she was not only interested in her peers, but actively spoke about them and wanted to interact with them. So I was worried about ripping her away from the kids she'd grown attached to. And the Pre-K assistant teacher was the same as her Preschool class assistant teacher. Plus the same classroom. So maybe only a few new faces, and one new teacher.

I didn't want to push her into JK just for the academics, at the expense of her emotional and psychological well-being. But her teachers from last year said she was more than ready cognitively, and would, at worst, be in the middle of the class, ability-wise. They also felt that the JK teacher would work better with Z's personality than the Pre-K teacher, which was really the clincher for me.

At Meet the Teacher day, she enjoyed playing with the Gak that had been set out, and she found a stuffed frog in the puppet show/quiet corner area that she really liked. So while she complained both school days this week that she doesn't like having new teachers and a new classroom, and keeps asking where her old teachers are, going to play with the stuffed frog gives her something to look forward to. She also enjoys her personal daily Mama-packed dye-free snack. *sigh* It's gonna be a long year.