I've been meaning to dedicate a blog post to Max's preschool adventures for a long time. Max started at Westboro Village Cooperative Preschool back in the first week of September. His class is made up of 20 kids who all turn/turned 3 years old in 2010. A couple of the kids have January birthdays, so they're almost 4. In fact, one of Max's classmates was also born September 9th! The class is fairly boy-heavy: the ratio is 6 girls to 14 boys. I don't think this has ever meant anything to Max as I'm sure girls only get icky after kindergarten.
The first week at school, the class was broken into thirds and each third got to go in on their own day to get acquainted with the classroom, the teachers and each other. The next week, it was all systems go for the whole class with preschool from 9:15-11:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. For a while, Max's selective memory definitely got in the way of my finding out about what went on in a typical day. I knew from drop-off time that the kids roared around in a gym (the preschool rents out space inside a church) with a pile of toys in the morning, but once they went upstairs to the classroom, all was a mystery. As in "What did you do today?" "I don't know". "Who did you play with?" "I don't know" or, better yet, "Nobody".
Given that the school is a cooperative, parents are expected to pitch in in a variety of ways, including providing in-class assistance as a "duty parent". At the end of September, I finally got to do my duty parent shift and answer a bunch of my questions about Max's day. The two classrooms are connected by a bathroom with a couple of stalls for the boys and girls. Each classroom has a few tables set up with a variety of different play stations set up. Most of the stations involve tactile play for motor skills development (everything from Potato Head building to Play-Doh to building block to dollhouses to a sandbox and water table to an arts & crafts corner). The two teachers typically staff the art area and the reading corner, leaving the duty parents to engage kids at other stations or help kids who just need a little nudge to get started.
My first duty day was a Monday, which is Max's favourite day of the week. On Mondays, the kids only use one classroom while the second is used for music class. A dedicated music instructor comes in for the morning and sings songs, plays recorded music, introduces the children to musical notes (quarter, eighth, half, etc.) as well as the diatonic scale. I got to sit in on Max's class that Monday and participated in everything. I really like how the duty parents become a part of the children's learning experience. It's really cool to start reading a book to somebody and have 8 other pairs of eyes swivel and listen in, or start a crazy building spree where the kids can't wait to show you their latest creation.
The one hitch with duty days is that I can't bring Leo and so I need someone to cover me at home while I'm with Max & co. Mommy stuck around the first time, Nana had a fun morning with Leo the second time and next week, Auntie Melody will get a turn. Thank you to all the awesome caregivers - you make everything so much easier!
All in all, preschool has been great. I get to stimulate my punctuality muscles which had pretty much atrophied since May. Also, I get to spend a little bit of one-on-one time with Leo, including swimming classes on Mondays (roughly an 8-1 mom-to-dad ratio so unlike the weekends, it's the moms who have to wait around for showers after class...YES!). Finally, Max gets the socialization that he's been missing since leaving full-time care AND gets a gentle prep for REAL SCHOOL. Who knows, this might be the first step to a rewarding career with the police force.
Epilogue
As a complete non sequitur, I wanted to let you all in on a little moment the boys and I shared tonight. Both were pretty cranky today, due to a lack of sleep. However, just after dinner tonight, I noticed that it had started to snow. I grabbed both of the boys and walked them just beyond the lip of the carport to let them feel it coming down. Max immediately started to catch flakes on his tongue and Leo just hung on with this stunned look of amazement, opening and closing his hand. They both got a real kick out of it and so even if I have to stare out my window at the cm+ of snow on the ground, I can be warmed by the thought of grabbing a few flakes with the boys tonight.
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