A New Day

Today marks Isaac's first day of preschool at Clarke School for Hearing and Speech.  What a day it was!  I stayed with him the entire day so I'll know his new routine and know what preschool is like for him.  He was pretty shy about showing up for the first day and didn't want to go past the entrance door at first. We found the cubby box for his backpack, where the refrigerator is for his lunch box, where his daily binder goes and then found his seat at the big table.  We played with 4 piece puzzles while the other children came into the class and then the day started.

For the first 30 minutes, he learned about the weather, the calendar and each child talked about how they felt.  For the next hour he worked at two different stations to learn about the letter M, do some painting with marshmallows, flashcard vocabulary words and practiced washing, bathing, and brushing teeth.  It was all just so cute.  This was all followed up with a very structured snack time of juice and crackers.  Story time was next and then they all got to go outside to play at the playground for about 40 minutes.  He came back inside the classroom for lunch and then quiet, dark, rest time.  For the last hour, he worked in 3 cycles of learning and free play.  At the end of the day, he was happy and tired and ready to come home.  Me too!

This is a very different routine for all of us.  I'm not sure how I'm going to balance the commute to get him back and forth everyday AND homeschool the big kids AND maintain the daily household/cleaning/laundry/meal preparation needs.  I'm also not sure that I even want to be away from Isaac for 5 hours everyday!  This will be the hardest part for me...the heart of the matter.  I'm soo NOT a preschool Mom.  I'm more of an anti-drop-off-preschool Mom.  After 13+ years of parenting, this is the first time I've ever enrolled a child in a "real" preschool! But I'm praying that I'll find a balance sooner rather than later!  This will be very good for Isaac and as far as that goes, I feel great about our choice to join the oral-deaf education program at Clarke pre-school.  Here's a link to thier website.