Hi,
Reporting on DS 3s first week at preschool: I posted last year about whether or not to send him at 2 and after going back and forth decided against it -- we just have one option for preschool and the particular teachers for the twos were unenergetic and kids all ran around taking eachother's toys, there were only peg puzzles and they were not open to adding anything to the room, etc. When observing the twos though I noticed the threes looked a lot more engaged and happy.
So we started this first week in the 3 year old program (they are inflexible on age groupings) with a little optimism. At the meet/greet I was pleasantly surprised to hear the classroom is used alternate days for the 4 year olds. Which is wonderful as it meant that in addition to peg puzzles there was one 24 piece puzzle, and some books with a reasonable number of words. Still not challenging at all but better than if the room was geared solely towards 3s. On the minus side during the same hour a older child pushed him repeatedly on the preschool's playground, until finally he went sprawling. So he came away saying there were "too many kids" and was not looking forward to today.
Another plus, none of the other kids in his class has attended preschool before, so it is nice everyone starts socially on the same plane. DS is socially very much 3.
The room is tiny, there's no windows, generally speaking the stuff to play with is really dull. They have a lot of rules. So I don't know how long he'll last. So far he has come out dry eyed but saying he didn't like it. He's agreed to continue trying to get used to it. He likes the teacher. And there are a couple kids of professional parents in there (unusual for our area). Lastly but not leastly -- I heard a rumor that problem kids are always put in the other teacher's class
As DS is a sensitive and careful type that is much appreciated.
All kind of moot as we will have him in a different (much nicer I believe) preschool next term as we have a temporary move to a real city coming up. So this is just a trial run and in a couple weeks we'll just quit it if he's still saying he doesn't like it.
Polly
