Off to Preschool!

Wednesday was my baby’s first day of preschool…well, her SECOND first day, I suppose, since she went last year too. Now she’s in the 4-5’s class and since she’s in the same room with the same teacher, the first day of school was no big deal…for either of us. There were no tears, no apprehensions, no anxieties…MOMMY handled it just fine! J  And so did Kaitlyn, of course. We took the traditional “1^st day of school” photos on the front porch and Kaitlyn looked adorable…and slightly bigger and more grown up than last year’s photo. She made a sign that said “Kaitlyn’s 1^st day of preschool – age 4 ½“…I helped her spell, but she wrote it all by herself. I thought it’d be neat if we did that every year so we can see how her handwriting improves over the years. Once at school, she walked in like she owned the place, went right to her cubby, washed her hands and sat down to play with play-doh…hooray, she still remembers the routine! I took a couple more pictures, gave her a kiss and hug and was out the door…easy peasy! And I didn’t even cry this year, like I did last year…yay! I’m sure sending her off to kindergarten next year will be a different story. After school I begged and pleaded for details of her day…all I got out of her was that they had chocolate pudding for snack (!!!!) and that she got to play with some art stuff, but not too much of it…which I think means she wanted to do more art/coloring stuff. And she said she got weighed and measured, which they do on the first and last day of school, to see how much they grow over the year. Very exciting stuff!! J

 

Since one of the teachers moved to Texas at the end of last school year, they have a new teacher, who happens to be one of my friends from our Mom’s Group. This is super because now I have someone “on the inside” to tell me everything that Kaitlyn won’t! I don’t want to bother her and be annoying, but any details she wants to share, I’ll certainly appreciate. She mentioned that they are working on a new handwriting program…Handwriting Without Tears. I have no idea what this entails, but apparently it’s the same program that Anthony Wayne uses, so she’ll have a smooth transition into kindergarten. She does fairly well with writing uppercase letters, but her lowercase ones need some work. And we REALLY need to practice writing between the lines. But really, for a not-quite-5-year-old, I think she does pretty well. She’s also picking up more sight words when we read and they are coming more quickly to her…she doesn’t have to think as long about which word it is, she just says it…for some of them, anyways. She can usually read the, he, she, was, happy, please, to, too, saw, they, see, of…there may be a few more. And she’ll sound out the word if I prompt her to do so, but she doesn’t ‘get’ that she can read herself…like, she needs me to tell her to “sound it out” and point to the words. But, it’s very cool that’s she’s actually reading!