Pre-School Days

Anna attends a local Montessori school, which she loves, and we do, too. It is very structured, and they emphasize things like life skills, independence, and responsibility - as in you are responsible for your own mess. They have really helped her learn to be potty trained and get on the road to reading.

On the days I work, Colin attends a preschool at a church in Round Rock. I liked their program because they have 2 adults for every 6 children, and the facilities look clean and organized. Since its only 9-1, Anthony gets to do all the pick up and drop off. He's noticed some differences in the schools. Colin's school is more like structured playtime.

Colin's school is closed Monday, Valentine's Day, so they told Anthony, "If you'd like to bring Valentine's for the other students, here's a list of names." A few nights ago I printed out some color valentine's day cards from the web, and wrote the names of the other students on them.

Today, Colin came home with a HAUL of Valentine's junk. Seems all of the other 5 students brought cards AND Valentine's minutiae as gifts. He got a cup with candy, mini bubbles, pencil, and stamp, and a twisty heart-shaped straw with a cut-out airplane, and a plastic heart filled with candy and an eraser and more bubbles, and it went on! One mom even made little gift bags that contained, in addition to candy and more plastic stuff, a homemade frame decorated with hearts.

I felt a little guilty that all we did was send homemade paper cards. But then I looked at all this stuff, and thought, other than the inherent value of chocolate, does any child really need more plastic paraphenalia? Did I really need to go to Party Pig and spend money on similar trinkets to keep up?

Anthony dismissed the whole thing as ridiculous, since 18-24 month olds really have no appreciation of Valentine's Day. And I think he's got a good point.

But I'll be more prepared at Easter.

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While I was at work today, Anna wrote her first word unassisted. She writes her own name all the time, and will slowly take dictation (for thank you notes and stuff). But today while Anthony was on the phone, she took it to a whole other level.

She wrote her name on the back of an old business card, then she wanted to write Pooh Bear's name. She told me at dinner, "So I wrote P, then an O, then another O, then I didn't know what came next. So I looked it up." Which means she turned on my computer, when to Disney.com, saw that POOH ends with H, turned off the computer, and finished her card! She's already looking up things on the web!