Theo is now attending a sweet, little co-op school on Wednesday and Friday mornings. I became friendly with two other moms who are neighbors and both have daughters in the pre-k classroom next to Theo’s. We would see them at the playground before school and Theo became friends with Evelyn and June, the daughters. A couple weeks ago they invited us to join their co-op school. It’s at Evelyn’s house, and there are three other kids who attend. They have a teacher who has been working with their family for four years, as Evelyn has an older brother and they did this with him and others when they were younger. Theo is dropped off at 8:40am and then I pick him up at PS 230 at our regular time of 2:40pm. He spends the morning there, they have play time, circle time, snack time and work on some kind of project or story. The teacher then walks them to school for 12:15pm (it’s very close) and I pick up after school. It’s really great! Theo absolutely loves these girls and he was thrilled to attend and has been loving it since he began last week. It gives him two full days of school, and gives me the break to not run back and forth for the short 2 1/2 hours of his pre-k. It’s basically a win-win. I love the in-home nurturing style that is reminiscent of his pre-school last year at Play by the Park. I’ve yearned for that a bit since he began the real classroom style this year. These all seem like good steps to prepare him for five full days of school next year when he begins kindergarten.
Next week we have parent/teacher conferences at PS 230 and I look forward to hearing from his teacher how he has been doing so far this year. He seems to really like it, and he has already learned so much. He is writing more letters than before, and now numbers as well, reciting the months of the year and the days of the week regularly. He LOVES reciting the song they learned for the days of the week. It’s very sweet because every time we talk about a day to look forward to, or simply a day when something is planned, he recites the song. “Sunday, Monday… there are seven days in the week!” As he sings he counts the days on his hand. I can really see him grasping the concept of the days and when to expect what will be happening. He is very interested in counting days and counting everything. He is often using basic addition and subtraction without even being fully aware of it. He is able to calculate in his head quickly from sight and I find that pretty amazing.
We also ditched the babysitter. I didn’t want to do both the sitter and the co-op school. It was too much bouncing around for him with other people, and we also can’t really afford to do both with me only working a small amount. We chose the co-op school since that was what he really wanted. He never seemed to bond with the new sitter and that wasn’t sitting well with me at all. This now gives me zero time without both kids for working on home studies but we are making it work.