After much anticipation and excitement for this day (by both parties), Brady is officially a preschooler! It's hard to believe how fast the last three and a half years went by and it makes us think that before we blink, Izzie will be doing this too. Brady has loved going to the gym daycare since he was 15 months old, so we knew he'd have no problems being there without us. He loves all transportation, and the bus stop is across the street from our house, so he has spent the last year watching it and getting excited about going to school. Unfortunately, he won't be able to ride the bus until kindergarten, but he still has a lot of fun spotting them everywhere we go.
After some research, I decided to place him in the district's preschool program instead of choosing a private option. Our district is 50th in the state (out of 600 districts), and the curriculum was one that I supported having been a former Pre-K teacher myself. I registered him for the two day per week option and we ended up getting our first choice of days and schools (there are several day options offered at different elementary schools in the district). We got paperwork a few weeks ago that gave us the schedule of days there wouldn't be school and also a letter about a day where we are to bring our child to meet the teacher. We weren't allowed to bring siblings, so Bethany watched Izzie and off we went!
Half the class was scheduled to meet the teacher at a time, so there were only six of the total thirteen children there.
They have a main teacher and an assistant teacher, which is very standard to meet adult to child ratios. His main teacher is Mrs. Soden and the assistant is Mrs. N. They sat the kids down to talk about areas of the room and things they'd do each day. They read them a story about a mouse's first day of school. My main worry in Brady going to school was that he wouldn't be able to sit still as it seems he always has ants in his pants. I was shocked observing the story time that he sat still. On the other hand, he had something to say about every single page, which is normal at this age, but he did it much more than the other children.
After the story, they let the kids explore the different areas of the room. Brady was hanging with the girls for a while in the housekeeping area.
But then he found the cars and airplanes and he was a goner.
In the few days between the teacher meet and the first day of school we had some things to get so Brady would be ready. He needed a backpack and was very excited about getting one. I let him pick one out at the store and he chose a Transformer backpack featuring Bumblebee. This made Andy very proud as he loves his Camaro. Once he reaches kindergarten, I'll order backpacks from Lands End like I had a kid because they last forever (the one I got for freshman year of college was the same one I used all over Europe last year almost 10 years later). We bought a cheap pair of sneakers to put in his extra clothes bag and he was ready to go!
The night before school started, I had to make an unexpected run to the store, so I snagged some donuts for breakfast. We get donuts for special occasions and I figured the first day of school qualified. I hid them so Brady wouldn't see them until the next morning. My mom always took pictures of us eating breakfast before the first day of school, so I decided to keep up with that tradition.
It seems that pictures in front of your front door have been popular on the first day of school (my mom took them when we got to school before we went to elementary school and not sure what we did after that). Brady grabbed his backpack and kinda smiled for me.
The elementary kids were across the street waiting for the bus, so Brady was more concerned about them than posing for me.
Andy followed us to the school so he could be there on the first day before he headed to work. Brady knew right where he wanted to play. I gather this will be his favorite area.
He has class from 8:30 to 11:30 so I decided to run some errands with Izzie. We ran to the grocery store (so much easier with one kid) and then she came home and took a nap. We ran to the post office and then it was time to pick him up. Crazy how fast three hours goes by when you only have one child to worry about, and a young one at that. He was excited to see us and gave me a big hug. I asked about his day and all I got out of him was that he had a snack and played with the cars and play doh. I opened his backpack at home and there was a dot painting, so he told me that he painted. Other than that, I haven't been about to get more details. Hopefully as time goes on, he'll be more descriptive about his day.
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