The First Signs of Summer...

Summer has begun! Its been hot for a week or two now and Joseph has finished up preschool for the year. What a great experience he has had. Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending his year end presentation and carnival. They sang many lovely songs, then the teacher asked them each what they want to be when they grow up. Some cute answers were 6, a big sister, many I don't knows and Joseph who decided right there on the spot that he wants to be a karate man. I don't know where that came from, but that's ok. A karate class may be in his future! We were also each presented with a scrapbook of our own child, filled with photos from the entire year! The girls had put these together for each preschooler. How cool is that???

We celebrated with cake and outside play and a carnival of games where the kids won fun prizes. It was so cute, all the senior girls were so sad they would not be seeing the kids again. Joseph gave out hugs like crazy, though I am sure he had no idea why. The younger girls were happy to hear he was going to be back next fall. The program barely escaped the budget cuts that have been happening all too often lately.

When Annalina went to preschool, I took her to the Calvary Lutheran school near our old house. It was expensive, but she like it well enough. It was a good program. Since we are fairly close to Glencoe, and since big brother and sis both go there(and since it is so much cheaper), I thought it would be fun to try it out for Joseph. I admit, before this I was a bit of a preschool snob, thinking my kids couldn't possibly learn what they needed from a high school program. Oh how wrong I was! Here is what I have learned, aside from the fact that preschool is not really supposed to be academic... The preschool teacher is not being paid by the families of the children, she is getting paid a fairly good salary to teach the high school students to be teachers, so most of our very minimal tuition payments(less than a third of what I was paying at the other school) go to activities, field trips, art supplies, etc. They went on three field trips this year, the zoo, the childrens museum and the pumpkin patch and I was not asked to send in extra money for any of these excursions, WOW! Also, there are 24 preschoolers in Joseph's class. Guess what, there are 24 high school girls in each class. This means a 1 to 1 ratio. I have watched these girls develope attachments with these little 3 and 4 year olds. I have seen them taking the time to help a little one learn to write their own name, or read them a book. It really seems to me that Joseph was showered with attention from teenage girls who for the most part really want to do this for a living as adults. Joseph began writing his entire first name about halfway through the year. He can count almost to twenty and knows most of his letters. With another year of preschool still to come he is well ahead of where Annalina was right before Kindergarten. I don't really think this is terribly important, he will learn at whatever pace is best for him, but he got the attention he needed to learn many things very quickly!

Joseph's teacher is Mrs DeWhitt and I have never seen someone with more love and patience for these little ones. She is truly an angel and I am so glad Joseph will be going back next fall. The really fun thing is that most of the neighborhood boys will be joining him next year! Yay, good times ahead for Joseph!

Joseph's flower balloon sculture popped, so one of the girls gave him hers! Sweet!