Paper Trail

Kindergarten is a great thing. It is teaching LittleNortherner about different subjects (math, writing, science, etc.) and helping him to refine his social skills (he's no longer one of the "big kids" at school - he's in the youngest grade). It's introducing him to more of the kids in his immediate neighborhood/town, and the new skills he is learning help to build his self-confidence (although, do you really need to do that in a five-year-old that already thinks he is a teenager?!).

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The thing that concerns NorthernDaddy is that school is starting to teach LittleNortherner about paperwork. Through his experience in the world of employment, NorthernDaddy is intimately familiar with the corporate practice of creating and keeping a paper trail for every single action that is completed, attempted, or even thought about. Some companies complete every daily transaction in the electronic realm, and still require a paper hard copy to be created (go ahead, ask NorthernDaddy if he knows any companies like that...). It's crazy, the amount of paper that is moved around this world.

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LittleNortherner is learning this: every day there is a veritable mountain of paper that rides home in his backpack. There are forms to fill out, notices to read, daily activity logs to peruse. There are drawings - Good Lord, are there drawings - that spill out of his pack and cover the floor of the car.

 

Today, the papers were super-giant-humongous-sized. There's an easel pad sized drawing of a spider web. There's a notebook sized drawing of.....something. The piece de resistance has to be the 48" x 36" page torn from the daily schedule board. It lets you know that Little is the line leader, some other young person is the "caboose", and a bit of other important news. Apparently, the line leader for the day gets to take home the schedule page.

 

Think about that....it's the most glorious day of school for a kid (who doesn't love to be line leader?), and his or her reward - their reminder of such a momentous occasion - is more paper.

 

(Remember kids, there has to be a paper trail for everything!)

 

 

That, or the teacher has learned a simple new way to clean her classroom...