BabyT started her new preschool this week. It's awesome - Montessori-ish without being overly strict, *much* closer to home than her daycare, less expensive, and great feedback from other parents at work.
Her first day went remarkably well - she came home with tales of doing a bear art project with "Man Teacher" - yes, one of her teachers is male, and she couldn't remember his name. I was really amused when she insisted on calling him "Man Teacher." ;)
TJ bravely took drop-off and said it was hard. One of the other kids pointed out that she wears glasses. Not unkindly, just in that way kids have of classifying things. (Someone else pointed out she's a girl.) This gave us both pause, but I reminded myself that these kids are too little to tease each other.
She was fine at first, and he stayed to keep an eye on her during circle time. She was unsure about the new songs and caught a glimpse of him through the window and started crying. We're both sad about this story, but it seems that she rallied, eating her snack, doing her "work", and telling her teacher she had to go potty (!!!). She didn't really want to come home when we went to pick her up at noon which I take as another good sign.
Today we let her stay for most of the day and picked her up 2 hours early. She seemed happy, but hadn't napped there (no surprise!). She ate well, though this packing lunch thing is getting old already (and it's only the second day! Aaaghh.)
I was pleased when one of the teachers asked me if T knew any Spanish. Apparently they discovered this by accident and one of the teachers was having fun trying to figure out all the words T knows. This made me feel good- even though preschool has a higher ratio than daycare, she seems to be getting individual attention, despite being the youngest and newest student.
Thanks to @Jasmine for commenting about napping on the last post. I'm trying to use "freeze your body" and some quiet patting to get T to fall asleep. I *know* she still needs the nap, since she's a disaster by 4pm if she doesn't take one. It worked yesterday (hooray!).
I'm sure I'll write more about preschool, especially on how we arrived at a decision on where to send her. But so far, so good. I'm very relieved.
I'm glad to hear her first day went so well! Athena will be two at the end of May, and it just dawned on me that I had not thought of pre-school at all. (Fortunately, we aren't interested in the schools that you have to sign up for just after conception.) I would love to hear about your school selection process. I'm mostly relying on word of mouth at this point.
ReplyDeleteSounds great!
ReplyDelete@Mel - Luckily for us there aren't many preschools around here that require a before-birth commitment :) However the good ones near us (that are at all compatible with working parent schedules) fill up FAST so we did have some challenges in this area. In fact, I would have been happy to wait until T was 3 before starting her, but they only had a few spots left at this school, so we took it early rather than take the chance that we might miss out.
ReplyDelete@n&m - so far :)
Hooray for happy preschool experiences- for the kids and the parents!
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear the new preschool is working out. ;)
ReplyDelete