Tyler's 1st day of Pre-school (for his 2nd year) was this past Tues. and his first week went SO great! Last year I participated in a joy school where 6 moms took turns teaching 2 times a week for 2 hours. There were 6 kids and both Tyler and I loved doing it. I loved having the opportunity to come up with lessons and activity's and be 100% involved in the learning process right along with Tyler. I loved being able to see how he interacted with others and see how he compared educationally. Tyler loved having his friends moms be the teachers and getting to go to new houses each week. It really worked for us, but all of the moms (minus 1 who moved away) wanted to put their kids in *real* pre-schools their year right before kindergarten. If I could have rounded up another 4 or 5 moms I would have done a joy school again this year because it just worked SO well for all the things I was looking for in preparing Tyler for kindergarten (social opportunities, learning, fun, following directions, listening, etc.). Educationally I feel that he is right where he needs to be at 4 years old (if not a little ahead), so I didn't feel that it was particularly necessary for him to go to a *real* pre-school and the cost of a lot of them is OUTRAGEOUS (not to mention I REALLY love having him home with me. I'm in NO hurry to send him away to school. all that will come soon enough and I just want to enjoy every last pre-school moment I have with him). But I also didn't want him to have NO type of pre-school the year before kindergarten, so when I couldn't get enough moms together to do a joy school I started looking around at some of the *real* pre-schools in Logan.
We were referred to ABC 123 Pre-school by one of the moms in our last joy school group who has sent 2 of her kids there and highly recommends it (not to mention it was BY FAR the cheapest one I could find). Mrs. Jen does it out of her home in a cute little basement room downstairs (and has a KILLER playground out back which is pretty much all Tyler talks about when he comes home) and she admits 12 kids a year. It's 3 days a week for 2 1/2 hours a day, and Tyler absolutely LOVES everything about Mrs. Jen and her preschool. It sounds like she is a great teacher and has a lot of fun with the kids so a lot of my worry (about not knowing exactly how Tyler would do) was relieved. And I have to say I really, really, really LOVE having Kylee ALL to myself for a couple hours each day during the middle of the week! She's so precious and we love our girl time!!
As of right now Tyler can write 10 different words with no help (his favorite being poop which sends him into a fit of giggles every time he writes it, so we've had to go over
appropriate places to write that word...like
not at church on his primary handouts). He also loves to make-up names by drawing a person and than writing that persons' name above it by writing a combination of any letters he can think of. He then makes me sound out the name of whatever it is he's written down (ex. halstxr-on the paper sitting by my computer) and says, "yep. that's his name." I haven't started doing any serious reading with him yet but he's sorta started to teach himself by sounding out small words he sees (ex. he saw the word 'books' labeled on the front of the book drop-off at the library and read it on his own) so my goal this year is to help push him as far as he'll go with it!
On Thur. Tyler came home with a wood boat that he was instructed to paint and bring back to school with him on Tues where they'll be talking about floating objects. He wanted to get painting right away, and Kylee didn't want to be left out, so I found some wood dinosaurs in my
craft closet for her, along with some smocks and paint and they got to work!
Her dinosaur was
of course pink and purple!
And Tyler's boat was
of course methodically painted with every color he was given, in even stripes and splotches across the boat. Not one wood space was left uncovered and no paint was overlapping-each color placed strategically next to the last color!
I LOVVVE Kylee's feet in this picture! She ALWAYS always always crosses her ankles when she sits down and I think it's so darn cute!!
I Love my kids and I'm so happy I get to be home with them all day and experience every moment of their day with them-tantrums, kisses, snuggles, boo-boo's and all! I'm just trying to soak up every minute of it before BOTH my boys experience BIG changes next year! I hope you always love school and learning as much as you do now Tyler-Love you!
