.: Preschool Prep and 1st Day!

I decided I wanted to get Tommy into some sort of schedule and routine for this year, and starting looking into preschools. About 2 months ago I called the one close by, that all our ward friends sent their kids to, to get more information. It’s a church based school (Church of Christ) and I’ve only heard great things about it. The hesitation comes because it’s from 9-2 for two days a week. I think 5 hours is quite long. Anyway….the director was really sweet and told me the 3 year old class was full but that I could be put on a waiting list, and then if Tommy doesn’t get in that year, he’ll be at the top of the list for next year. I thought that was good. I thought next year would be for sure what I wanted and was still debating about this year. Well, a couple weeks went by and she called, saying they had an opening! I started to panic, thinking I wasn’t quite ready to really send him. On the one hand, I thought Tommy could really benefit from interacting with other kids for that long, and I really think he would love it, but….the thought of having to pack his lunch each day, and sending him to school with a nap mat (they can choose to take a nap or watch a show after lunch) I don’t like the thought of that at all! and…he’s my baby. That’s what it comes down to, and even though we drive each other nuts throughout the day, I want him with me. He has the rest of his life to be in school….Call me crazy, whatever….

So….I went with Tommy and toured the school. Tommy was sold just by the playground. She said they started school with a short bible story and prayer. She told me all about the schedule including a letter of the week curriculum, music time, science, etc… the place looked good and I kept asking Tommy if this is where he would like to go. He always said yes, no matter how I phrased the question, he wanted to go. She said, she would hold the spot for a week. So I went home, and agonized, and prayed, and agonized about it some more. (BTW, throughout all this Matt’s opinion was-whatever, whatever you want to do that ‘s fine…)

Then I just decided, no, we’re not going to do it this year. I felt good….much better. Ahhhh.

So then….the question was, What should we do? I started thinking about Joy School, a pretty common Mom Co-Op curriculum, created from an LDS family. Then I was talking to a friend who had mentioned another, more traditional based curriculum called Funsteps. I looked in to that and decided that was it. My friend, Rose, wanted to do something with her boy, Noah, as well, but we wanted more that just us. We had the Relief Society send out an email and we got three other moms interested. So there’s 5 kiddos and we started on Monday at Rose’s home. She was the brave first teacher! We’ll each teach a Monday and Wednesday for 2 hours and rotate.

Sunday evening I planned to have this awesome School Dinner (couldn’t really be Back-to-School) and make Tommy a cool crown to wear. Then talk about what it will be like to go to ‘school’ and talk about a scripture….It didn’t happen. We had an ordinary dinner, spaghetti and rolls, no cool crown, BUT I did manage to pull out some ice cream sandwiches and dip them in sprinkles. Tommy…and Tyler thought it was awesome. Then I talked with him about having to go to bed earlier and getting ready earlier….AND the scripture-Be thou and example of the believers. We talked about what it means to be a good example to his friends, especially while at preschool. Who knows if anything got through but I tried!

Monday morning!

I tried to take some pictures, propping up the camera on the couch. The lighting was bad, and with the timer beeping, Tyler would run up to it, flip his hand palm up and say UH OH! So these were the best I could get-

He had a good first day but it was a little tough on Rose. These kiddos have not been on a ‘schedule’ before and having their ‘centers’ to stay in for a whole 5 minutes was a new world. Today was an introduction to Numbers. They made this numbers craft that he’s holding up. We had family home evening and then took some goofy pics with my new tripod Smile