School

For those of you who've inquired about Edie's first week of school, I can sum it up pretty quickly: She loved it.

Her new school day starts at 9am (although you can drop off as early as 7am). The Culvers are not morning folk, and we are both self-employed - so Jeff typically drops Edie around 8:45am. From 9am until 12pm, her group of 7 kids rotates classrooms every 45 minutes and she has science, music and movement, basic skills (reading/writing/etc), and then PE - each with its own teacher. Oh, and somehow they cram 15 minutes of French in each day with the cutest French teacher ever, who is actually from France and wears stylish European clothes. I know, it's a bit bougie, but apparently the school has taught French since it opened in the 50's and they keep it in the program to honor their first owner, who I think is the grandmother of the current owner, but I might be making that part up... plus, how ridiculous and adorable would it be if Edie actually spoke French? For now I think she's mostly getting amped about the Eiffel Tower stamp the teacher put on her arm, but whatevs. On Tuesdays, her group will have what they call "Lodge Day", which is a day spent in their annex building, where they will do art and baking all day. They even have a kiln and make pottery! I sort of wish I could do preschool.

At noon they have lunch and then in the afternoon they have a variety of activities available to them, there is story time, afternoon snack, and outside play. We can pick up as late as 6pm, but any time after lunch is fine too. I decided to pick Edie up right after lunch on Tuesday, just in case she was having a hard time with the transition. Well, she was happy to see me, but she wasn't particularly interested in leaving school. I asked her if she liked her first day and she looked at me like I was crazy and said, "I LOOVED it!" Being an idiot, I picked her up at 3:30 yesterday, racing to the school straight from a meeting and promptly felt like a bozo because she practically refused to leave and made me sit with her at the picnic table outside and watch her play with dinosaurs for like 30 minutes before she allowed me to take her home. Today, she stayed all day and insisted on playing "school" all evening.

I feel thrilled and like it's too good to be true. I love her new school, but I think I'm experiencing more growing pains than Edie. I'm used to the small school Jen runs where at pick up each day I can get a mini report on how the day went. I'm used to knowing all the other kids and them greeting Edie by name each morning. This is a big school with over 50 kids from 3-5yrs old, so there are more teachers, lots of assistants and the school itself is obviously much bigger. It's very homey and everyone is super friendly, it reminds me of my kindergarten classroom at Parkview Elementary actually, but it doesn't feel familiar yet.

For now, I'm reliant on Edie's reports from her day, which include such conflicting factoids as, "I didn't talk to anyone at lunch." and "At lunch, Olympia and I both had Gogurts in our lunch box!" Or, "I didn't have Science class today." and "Today we did a science experiment with sponges and eye droppers!" I will say though that the (so far) ease with which she's made this transition makes me think that Kindergarten next year is a possibility. Time will tell!