Kindergarteners get a taste of bus routine

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By Laura Drinan
Hometown Weekly Reporter

Kindergarten marks the beginning of a child’s path through the twelve-year school system. While it is an exciting time for a child to be starting school, it is also quite a daunting task. Besides the kids’ worries about being tossed into the unknown that is kindergarten, the parents (especially those who have not yet sent any children off to school) also feel anxious about their child’s first year in school. To ease some of those concerns and remind the children and their parents that there needn’t be any reason to worry, Medfield’s Memorial Elementary School, along with New ’N Towne, coordinated a morning for bus practice and a Popsicle party to follow.

Incoming kindergarteners, their parents, and siblings crowded Memorial Elementary School on August 23 and watched two yellow school buses drive up to the front doors. The kids practiced climbing the bus’s stairs and finding their seats, peering out the windows as their families waved to them from the sidewalk.

Although some children had already been on buses for field trips and summer camps, others were experiencing a ride on the school bus for the first time. After circling the block, the buses returned to the school with grinning faces in the bus windows. As the children hopped off the last step of the bus and excitedly ran to their families to tell them about the bus ride, New ’N Towne was setting up for the Popsicle party on the school’s playground.

New ’N Towne President Erin McDermott and several of the organization’s volunteers worked in collaboration with Memorial Elementary School to provide kindergarteners and their families a space to play and meet. Using different colored name-tags according to the child’s classroom teacher, parents and students were able to find others in the same class and introduce themselves before the start of the school year. After enjoying a Popsicle, the kids were welcomed to play on the playground and with their peers while the parents got to know some new faces around the school. “It’s really just a chance to let all the parents meet and mingle,” said McDermott, whose own son, Connor, will be entering kindergarten this year.

While the bus practice certainly helped to ease qualms about taking the bus to school, the kindergarteners and their families got to cool off and enjoy socializing on the hot summer day with New ’N Towne’s Popsicle party.