Eleanor Roosevelt High School Preschool Program

This year I hemmed and hawed forever undecided (me, wishy, washy?) about what to do for preschool for Lily. My thoughts are that she learns structure enough at Primary to serve her for Kindergarten, and she learns her basics at home enough to prepare her. What preschool has that Lily lacks is a largish group of children close to her age that meet regularly enough to learn important social skills. So though I wasn't wishy washy about wanting to do Joyschool with her, I only had one other mom-friend willing to do it with me so we both decided not to bother. Then a seasoned mom of 5 told me how much she liked the preschool program at the HS because the students just love the preschool age kids. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that paying over $1000 to give Lily a regular meeting time to get the right socialization seems wrong to me when I'm staying home! So the $40 for the whole year to cover snacks was certainly a bonus. But my favorite part was that it was from 12-3pm, the perfect time when we'd be done with morning activities (playgroup, farm, park, etc) and Beth had to take a nap anyway. It was PERFECT. And it was a big plus that the teacher's teacher, Ms. Bret is a very warm mother herself, very understanding and capable, though she didn't teach the kids herself. She also didn't seem very upset if we needed to be gone for family outings, and I didn't have to feel like I wasting a lot of money when we missed. So now that Beth is no longer taking naps and is 3 I told Ms. Bret to look for Lily AND Beth for next year. (But I'm still in search of mothers who want to do Joyschool also.)
Here are a few shots of Lily the one day I remembered my camera. For the first half of the year she would sling to my hand and arm at drop off time, but there was always a high school student to help her to her station to start off. As a matter of fact, those students gave Lily much more enthusiastic welcomes than Thomas ever got at his regular preschool. They all knew her name so quickly, I was impressed. Anyway, often her papers and drawings she brought home would have "I miss you Mommy" written in by a student/teacher for her because she said she was missing me. But whenever I showed up to pick her up she looked quite happy, often riding a ticycle or scooter around the room with a smile. She also loved wheeling her little back pack Grandma Linda gave her. She was so proud of the fact that this year she too had to tell me three things about her day, just like Tyra and Thomas do. And she loved making me wait to see her papers until we got home so she could surprise me and tell me about them. Now we'll have to finish up the book of her first year of preschool papers.