C's handprint turkey
IJ's handprint turkey
My little Indian
On Sunday the 12th, C's preschool class was invited to sing at the church service (his school is in the church). This was the first time I'd been to church in a long while, and really the first time I'd been to a real full church service. When I was a kid I lived in a much smaller town with a very small church that only had folding chairs and was very informal. So this was a little different. Not bad, since I do believe in God and all that; I just felt a little out of place in such a formal church setting after having not been in church on a Sunday in years. I think IJ was a little intimidated too. We sat down in the pew, and he looked all around with huge eyes. Then he started making sad faces and insisted that I put my arm around him. He got used to it though and really calmed down after he discovered the pencil and the little cards that you fill out. :)
C was playing in his classroom with the other kids until it was time for them to come out and sing. When the time came, C's teaher came walking down the aisle with all the little preschoolers in a line behind her. Except for C. He was sort of in line, but he was lagging behind, taking his own sweet time. He had his hands around the straps of his overalls, and was just looking all around as he slowly walked up to the front. He eventually made it up there. :)
C's class sang three songs, and I tried to get some video of all of them. I had a little hole where I could see C perfectly (I ended up having to sit in the middle of everybody), and I would have had good video of all three songs if the lady sitting in front of me hadn't of been whipping her head around every two seconds. Back and forth, back and forth. It was so annoying! (Is it bad to say I was annoyed with somebody in church? :) So here's the video where you can see C the best, with minimal head whipping. They're singing "If You're Happy and You Know It", and C is the one in the tan overalls and the green shirt.
After C was done singing, he came to sit with IJ and I, and the boys kept themselves busy filling out those cards. We almost made it through the whole service, until IJ started stinking up the place and announced that he had to go potty. Which was good timing since they had just started passing around the collection plate and I didn't have any cash with me. By the time we got done in the bathroom, people were filing out, so I think we did a pretty good job. :)
Here's the video I promised of C's preschool "Harvest Parade" (their version of a Halloween parade, I assume, since he goes to a church preschool). They dressed up as spiders and sang spider songs. R taped this since I had to miss it due to the hospital thing, but I think he did a pretty good job capturing the cuteness, don't you think? :) (C is the one in the blue camo)
C's been doing really well in preschool. When he first started going, he would cry every time I dropped him off. The first day I cried too after I left the room; it was hard leaving him in someone else's care for the first time ever. His tears didn't help at all, either. But over the past couple of months he's gotten more used to mommy leaving, and for the past few weeks there have been no tears at all. It's hug, kiss, I love you, and off he goes to play. It's great. C now says that all his friends are at preschool, and that he has fun.
C has learned so many new things, too. Yesterday he said, "Mommy, it's November!", and he always wants to know what day of the week it is (they do a calender time first thing in the morning where they talk about the month, the day of the week, and the weather). He's also learned a ton of new songs; I'm constantly catching him singing to himself (when I get around to taping him singing I'll post it here). They had a fire truck and firemen visit on the day C got to be the leader (he chose pretzels and watermelon Juicy Juice for the snack), and came home telling me all about smoke detectors and "stop, drop, and roll". He's even learned some new words. A couple of weeks ago we pulled into our driveway after a morning of school and he said, "That tree doesn't have any leaves. That's a predicament!" He said he learned that word at preschool that day.
I'd have to say the only bad thing so far about preschool is that it seems that C has been sick ever since he started, but that's pretty much to be expected with 16 three year olds running around.
IJ has even gotten in on this and I started him in a playgroup on Thursday mornings while C is in class (in the same church). But C is very adamant that only he goes to preschool: "Only I go to preschool. You're not old enough. You go to playgroup." But IJ loves his playgroup. He wanted a backpack like C had, so I found him a toddler sized Buzz Lightyear one that has wheels. He rolls it right into the school and into his room, and he'll put his art project in when it's time to leave and then he'll roll it right out. He never asks me to carry it for him. They even get to sit on little mats just like the preschoolers during song and story time, and I think he likes that. IJ doesn't quite sing the songs yet, but he gets all excited at the end, yelling yay! and clapping his hands. They also get to have gym time like the preschoolers; there's cars to ride in, bikes, a slide, balls, and a balance beam. But my favorite thing has to be during snack time. IJ always inhales his juice first, holds out his cup and says "More juice, pease!". Every time. It's so cute. He probably drinks the most juice out of all the kids there. :)
So, yeah, can you tell how much I love this whole preschool thing? :D
(I'll have our Halloween pics up as soon as I get them on Flickr. I'm a little behind in the picture uploading department, but, you know, I was gone for a week. :)
I finally got the letter about preschool in the mail today, and if you couldn't tell by the title, we were put on the waiting list. It says we should probably look into other programs. Lovely. They can't make my life easy, can they? So now I've got to make calls and hope the other preschools in our area haven't filled up yet, I have no idea if they've had their "screening days" or whatever yet, and hopefully the one we get into won't be too expensive. Please tell me preschool's not that expensive.
Damnit.
I'd like to know why in the hell they don't just ask for your income level first (Ha! Like we're rolling in the dough...) and then compare everyone's and call in the people that have an actual chance of getting in to do the screening. Because now basically that was just a big waste of time for us, and I wouldn't have had to fill out The Form From Hell. I could've easily done without that. And without C thinking that the Head Start building will be his school.
Damnit!!
Excuse me while I go and beat my head against a wall.
(And if I get C into another preschool and they call me in August to tell me he got in Head Start, I'm gonna be seriously pissed.)
Thursday morning was C’s preschool screening day for Head Start. Our appointment was at 8:30 in the morning, and I was really worried about it. For one thing, he had a hard time falling asleep the night before, so he wasn’t going to get as much sleep as he normally does. He also has a cold. I was worried this would make him uncooperative during his screening, making them think that he needed help or something, when he’s really very smart (well, I’m biased there, but he does know all the basic colors, he can count to 20, he knows almost all the letters, and he can sing the ABC’s--and a bunch of other songs.) I’m a big worrier in general, so I was pretty stressed.
I guess that I worried too much about it, though. I woke him up with “It’s time to go visit your preschool”, and he sprang right out of bed. No tears or anything, so the sleep thing wasn’t a biggie. C was really excited to be going for a visit; he’s been asking to go to preschool for a while, so I know he’s ready. He had some breakfast and some cold medicine and we were on our way.
We walked into the Head Start building where there were a bunch of other parents and 3 and 4 year olds that had the same screening time as us. I don’t know why, but I had figured that the screenings were individual appointments, so I was a little surprised. C got a nametag, and R and I got a big stack of forms to fill out, which included what I like to call The Form From Hell, in which I had to fill out just about every single little thing about C. When I wasn’t paying attention, R filled out all the easy forms and left me the two hard ones (one being The Form From Hell). Not fair. One of the preschool ladies came and asked C if he wanted to come “play”, which was code for going and taking care of his screening. They would be testing his motor skills, vision, hearing, and if he knows colors and whatever. C looked up at the lady, took her hand, and went right off with her. He didn’t even look back. Nope, the sleep and the cold weren’t a problem. As I was watching him walk off with the lady, I had one of those “motherly moments” and I had to blink back the tears. If you’re a mom, you know what I’m talking about, those times when it hits you that your baby is growing up, slowing making his way toward independence. One part of you wants it that way, while another part wants him to stay a loving little snuggling baby forever. I didn’t think about it for too long, though, since I had that lovely Form From Hell sitting blank in front of me. I don’t even want to see what I’ll be like on the actual first day of preschool…oh boy.
While C was doing his screenings, we had our meeting with the “Family Services” people, to give them the forms and our financial information. With Head Start, if you fall into a certain financial area you get preschool paid for. I had figured that we would be right in that financial area, so we hadn’t really looked at other preschools. But it turns out that we are only a couple of hundred dollars over this, and we were told that because of this we would probably be put on a waiting list. My first thought was, I’m filling out all these forms and doing the screening and telling C that this will be his preschool and now you want to tell me that he might not be able to come here now? We then found out that C did really well in the screening, which you would think would be a good thing. But, no, it just puts us on the waiting list more since they take the kids with the lower scores first. They told us that for the four year olds the financial area his higher since it’s their preparation for kindergarten program, so we would get into that. But I don’t really want to wait until he’s four, because I feel that he’s ready for preschool now. They also said that they do most of their placements in May, but sometimes it is August before some people know they are in. August? I don’t really think we could wait around that long to see if he gets in. We know that if we don’t hear anything from Head Start by the end of the month, we’re going to look at other preschools.
R and I were discussing it, and now we wonder if Head Start is even where we want C to be. It seems to us that it’s a place for kids that need a lot of help. We may not have a whole bunch of extra money, but C can already do a lot of the stuff that they are going to be helping these other kids to learn. I know that preschool is mostly for school readiness and they learn through playing, but I’d like him to be able to learn some stuff that he doesn’t already know. So I guess we might be paying for preschool next year after all. I don’t know…
As we were leaving, C turned towards the building and yelled “Bye bye my school!” If C ends up not going to Head Start, how am I going to convince him that the new place is his school, and not the Head Start building? I don’t know…
I didn’t think this whole preschool thing was going to be this hard for us. :(
