Pre-K

Today Aiden started Pre-K...and we made it through drop off without me crying.  We had a rough start to summer this year, he was bored and wanted a snack every five minutes and that created some tension between us.  After the first week of summer we got in a groove, I planned a lot of activities for him and everything improved so much.  I ended up having such a blast with him this summer that the closer it got to school starting the more bummed I got. I'll go ahead and admit that I even called the school to see if he could do a three day a week schedule instead of a five day a week schedule...they said no. But I am so grateful I get to spend so much time with him, so I guess I can send him to school each morning for half a day and let him receive an education.  It'll be worth it, but it's going to take a minute to get excited about it.

We are sticking to Pre-K this year since his birthday falls within the first week of school.  We've known since even before he went to preschool that we want him to have one additional year before starting kindergarten and that's why we chose this school for him.  They are the only school we found that offers a Preschool (4's class) Pre-K (5's class) and then Kindergarten.  They will use Kindergarten curriculum but will focus more on character building, leadership and social skills.  His class this year only has five students, one of which is his friend Cathy from preschool.  I love it that he'll get really focused attention from his teacher and she is seriously the sweetest.  Lets just say that during parent orientation she and I may or may not have teared up at the same time while she was talking about how this year she plans to really cherish, serve and love our "little gifts" as she calls them.  I just love this school and the amazing teachers and I think that makes it a little easier to leave Aiden in their care each day....it's still not super easy, but it's definitely so encouraging to know how much love he's going to get at school each day.

We had a back to school fancy dinner last night to start the new school year off right.  It included sparkling cider, which I don't know what is fancier than that.  During the dinner we prayed for Aiden and his teacher and this upcoming school year and then we talked about what he hopes to learn and what his goals are for the year.  Here is the list of his goals:
1. To learn more about Dinosaurs.
2. To redesign the playground so that there aren't so many big slides.
3. To try to go down a big slide.
4. To get faster at everything he does.

The only goal we're not quite sure about is how he's going to execute the playground redesign.  But the rest of the goals are pretty solid.  Anyway...we are kind of excited about the new school year and are sure it's going to be a great one!