Preschool Curriculum Night

Last night Carson's preschool had teacher-parent-get to know our school-night. Wow...these little guys have to learn a lot in order to be ready for kindergarten. Once we moved past the particulars about testing and criteria for moving on to the "next level", we were able to see what our precious kiddos DO all morning long at school. They made fun picture books to themes of books like "Miss Wishy-Washy" and "I Went Walking" with pictures of the kids acting out parts of the book on each page. It was fun to see the actual games and activities that Carson comes home talking a mile a minute about everyday when he jumps off the bus at 11:40. I was surprised that the stories he tells me were actually quite accurate to what he does in class. Mrs. Linn, Carson's teacher, really enjoyed telling us about "News/Share Time" and how the kids get to sit in a circle and share their item for the day. Carson gets to bring in an item to share on Mondays and Wednesdays. Sometimes I write Mrs. Linn a little note to tell her why he picked a particular item (and so she can prompt him for things to talk about if he doesn't have much to say to the class during share time) but other times his choice of items has spoken for itself. Carson's favorite "share item" so far has been his Buckeye necklace he made with Gigi and Bobpop. He sat on the front porch and helped Bobpop drill the Buckeye nuts, watched Gigi thread the beads and Buckeyes, and picked out two extra special blue beads to be added on b/c "blue is his favorite color". He wore it to watch the Ohio State v. Texas game and kept yelling O-H-I-O. Mrs. Linn told me that Carson shared all of these details with the class!

I was impressed with the classroom set-up and with Mrs. Linn once again. She is a good fit for my personality and Carson just adores her. This preschool program has opened him up socially in so many ways and it is truly a blessing. Yesterday Carson made a big breakthrough at preschool. Mrs. Linn said that he was interacting with another little boy for about 30 minutes and they were helping each other cook pizza in the play oven at school. This is HUGE for Carson b/c up until now he has been using parallel play with the children at school. We are proud of our little monkey.