Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Preschool, what?!?

So the elementary school system in town instituted a preschool program this year. They had one, than had to stop it (funding). They restarted it this year. Last I had heard, it was only for 4-5 year olds (one year before kindergarten). But the day before school started, I read an article and it stated that it was open to 3 year olds as well. We went in and registered but had to wait a bit before Claire could start. While we were waiting for her to start, she would tell us "you can drop me off and go away." She started last week. She LOVES it. Her teacher says she is very smart and loves to jump into the activities. She is also "so excited during circle time that she just can't sit still." I'm not really surprised by this revelation.
Poor Alex misses Claire every day. He has taught himself to wake up from his nap so that he can go with me to pick her up. And then she ignores him when we get there and runs to me and hugs me and the baby and acts like he isn't there. As soon as he wakes up, he asks me "go get dee-dee?" The first day I dropped her off, he really thought he was staying too. Even though I told him ahead of time that it was just Claire. But he seems to have accepted it now. The first few days, it was strange. For the most part, we have just a small amount of time together. We get back home from dropping her off, have lunch, then he goes down for a nap. I'm not sure I would have picked the afternoon session if I had a choice, but it seems to have worked out well for us. I end up with about 2 hours of free time if baby cooperates and sleeps. 
This whole situation stirs up some interesting feelings in me. For one, I wonder if I am doing the right thing. Sending her off all alone...so young... (Never mind that she loves it. And has not had a single problem with it.) I wonder if I should be homeschooling her. She has never been away from me. She is a pretty independent girl, but what if she needs something. (Never mind that I hire baby sitters often, and for 8-10 hours sometimes.) I somehow feel like a failure because I didn't even try to homeschool. (Never mind the fact that if we lived in Utah, this wouldn't even be an issue. I would send her to school without a second thought. I never even thought about homeschool until we came to MO.) Then I think about next year. What do I do next year? Alex would be eligible to go too. I heard that they hope to have a second class next year for each section. But if they don't, do I put them both in the same class? Or do I put one in the afternoon and one in the morning? My brain hurts just to think about it all. Of course, I can always homeschool later if I want to.

2 comments:

MommaKAS said...

Don't sweat the internal homeschooling debate, and lose your guilt. It's natural, as a mom, to agonize about your children being away from you. But it's good for kids to get away from home/mom and learn to interact with strangers, too. She'll be fine! As will Alex next year and Ella when she gets to that age.

Debbie said...

Listen to your Mom!