Pre-school! . . . Sort of . . . Not Really

Today was the first day of our Early Childhood Family Education class, which is a Minnesota public school program for kids birth to pre-k.

Cora's class is for kids 24-35 months (she is 34 months old). It meets one day a week, for an hour and a half, and it's not a drop-off program--for the first half hour the parents and kids play together, and for the final hour the kids stay in the kid room and do pre-schoolish stuff with a couple of teachers, and the parents go to a separate room to do parent stuff (discuss parenting topics, led by a facilitator). The course we're signed up for runs September through January.

I feel that Cora could handle more pre-school than this (I'd love to be dropping her off two or three mornings a week and then getting some work time), but I also feel that she's progressing nicely at home, at not-quite-three we're still in the time frame where pre-school is very optional, and a lot of pre-school programs seem to be for kids three and up and/or are too spendy for us right now. So this program works nicely for our this fall's needs and budget. You should have seen Cora's face when she found out she would need neither a back pack nor a lunch box, though.

We arrived on time this morning and dropped Hazel off in the Sibling Care room. She had her own cubby with her name on it! Just like when I drop her off at the gym, she cried at first but calmed down within a few minutes. (They have a one-way window for parents to look through from the hallway.)

Then we went to Cora's classroom and she jumped right in exploring. She spent some time with the Little People barn and some puzzles and the water table. And chatting up one of the moms. She's one of seven kids in the class--five boys and two girls. After a half hour of free time we all sat down together for some songs (Cora was familiar with this from library story hour) and then it was time for us to separate, which Cora was fine with because she's used to giving me the boot at the gym childcare. Actually I don't think any of the kids were upset by separating.

After that I don't know what she did! From what she tells us, there was something involving holding hands and marching, there was something involving bugs, and there was a snack during which she "shared the red juice with Alex." When I came back to get her she was cheerfully chatting over a bear puzzle with one of the two teachers.

In the parents' room we sat around a conference table and took care of business like signing up for snack rotation and learning what to do with our proof-of-immunization forms. At the end we briefly got to discussion topics such as kids who climb out of their cribs and kids who tear wildly around Menards.

Since the ECFE programs starts at birth, I was mildly concerned that the parent portion might be a cabal of mommies who all knew each other, but it was far from it. Of the seven parents, three were dads, three had only moved to the U.S. as adults (from Somalia, Mexico, and India), and one was born and bred in the States but in recent years had lived in Sweden and China. I think we're going to get a range of parenting ideas in there, and I'm looking forward to hearing it.

For her part, Cora has already asked to go back several times.