Thomas Halbrook grasped the end of his pencil in one hand and rested his chin on another hand. Then he set about writing on a paper his teacher had handed out about pets.

High school was years away, but Thomas plunged into the project with all of the seriousness of a senior taking a final exam.

How many dogs were there? How many birds and fish?

He looked to the side as he calculated.

Less than a month after starting kindergarten at Granite City's Holy Family School, Thomas is settling in to life in school.

"He's done very well from the beginning. He was ready to start school," said Gina Schubel, Thomas' teacher.

At this point, Schubel said, kindergartners are over any kind of uneasiness.

Thomas, 5, claims he wasn't crazy about going to preschool at Holy Family Learning Center. But he had a different attitude about kindergarten.

"In kindergarten, I was 'OK, I'm good. I'm good,'" Thomas said.

But Thomas' mom, Suzanne Halbrook, suspects he might have had some nervousness about going to kindergarten.

Suzanne Halbrook recalls what he did when she dropped him off at school the first day.

"I bent over and told him goodbye, and he said, 'I don't think I want to do this,'" Halbrook said. Even now, when she drops him off at school, Thomas still looks back at her with an uneasy look.

For a kindergartner, lots of subjects can be tough. But there are things in the classroom meant to make the job easier.

On the floor of that classroom is a rug, full of red, blue, orange and green squares. It's covered with numbers, tic-tac-toe squares and Chinese checker boards.

On a wall are multicolored shapes: circles, triangles, hearts, rectangles and stars.

In the midst of this, Thomas alternates in class between serious and smiling looks.

There are indications he likes to make people smile.

"He's a very good storyteller," Schubel said. "Thomas will be on stage somewhere."

Margaret Pennell, principal at Holy Family, has seen the same thing for several years.

"I have known Thomas from the day he was born. I taught both his parents," Pennell said. "He will talk to you. He's very verbal. He has a great sense of humor."

Contact reporter Jim Merkel at 618-344-0264, ext. 138