Parkes Ranch: Our little preschooler

Last month, Adelaida's teachers asked me if I was ready to move her up from the 2.5- to 3-year-old class to the preschool class. I was expecting this move around January, but was happy to consider moving her earlier. Dale and I discussed it, and after a week of Adelaida being sick and some delays at school, she moved to the preschool class two weeks ago.

The preschool class differs from the toddler classes in several ways. First, the toddler classes are pretty finely divided by age, so all the kids in the class are the same age, to within about six months. The preschool classes have kids age three to five, so there is a much broader age range. Second, while the toddler classes have Montessori stations, the kids really just use those stations to play during their free time; the preschool classes have set times that the kids do real Montessori work. Third, the student-to-teacher ratio is much larger in the preschool classes, which results in the kids doing a lot more things by themselves. And finally, the preschool classes get to use the big kid playground rather than the little kid playground!

The first two days in the preschool class, Adelaida wasn't very excited about it. She didn't have problems when Dale dropped her off or anything, but for the first few days she told me that she didn't want to go to the new classroom; she wanted to stay in her old classroom. By day three, she was asking to go to school even on non-school days! She loves the new class, and the "work" she does at school. I had Adelaida home with me yesterday and, after telling her that she couldn't go to school but would be going back to school tomorrow, she announced that it was work time and she wanted to do some work. I had looked at some of the stations in her class and noted some that I could do with Adelaida at home, so yesterday morning Adelaida practiced transferring dry beans from one bowl to another with a spoon (and counting the spoonfuls, up to 53!), pouring rice from one cup to another (a huge mess and we won't be doing that one again without preparing an area that we can clean up easily!), and sorting pictures of animals from largest to smallest. She was occupied, practicing great skills, and happy -- what more could I ask for?

This morning, she announced that she wanted to go to school today. I love it that my daughter loves school!

One other new feature of the preschool class is that Adelaida has homework, a few sheets of homework each week, with a week to finish them. She got her first homework last week and it was due on Monday -- four sheets of paper, two practicing the letter "L" and two practicing the number 12 (the class's letter and number of the week last week). She did one or two sheets each day and did much better than I expected. And after those four sheets were finished, she asked me for more homework! I didn't know what to give her, so yesterday I bought a preschool workbook that she can work on after her weekly homework is done.

Here are samples of her first homework.

Letter recognition, big L and little l.