Rose Begins Preschool

The day is finally here!  Rose has been dying to go to preschool ever since Clara started at John Knox two years ago!  Rose was so pumped for her first day of school and was just thrilled to finally be old enough to go.  

We had a meet-and-greet with the teachers (there are 3 full-time teachers for Rose's class - Mrs. James, Mrs. Richards, and Mrs. Harper) a few days before school started.  Rose went right in and made herself at home playing with a big wooden castle and loads of princess figurines.  There was a big conversation between Belle and Gaston about something I couldn't quite follow.  

While there, Mrs. Harper told me that even though Rose was enrolled in the TTh class for 3 year olds (since she has a January birthday) there was a chance that since the teachers all know Rose already and she was SO CLOSE to the December cut-off that we could get an exception for her to attend the MWF class to give her one extra day of preschool each week.  Lucky for us, Mrs. James (the head teacher) told me when I asked that they had just had a girl cancel her spot for the MWF class because her family was moving and we were given that spot even though there was a waitlist since Rose had a sibling who went to JKCP and family members always get the first spot on the waitlist.  

It's been perfect for Rose since three of her friends from church (who will all start Kindergarten the same year as Rose anyway) are also in the MWF 4 year old class.  So we know lots of friends and all the teachers this year and it's just been such a great transition!  I get to volunteer there in a couple of weeks and can't wait to see how she interacts in the classroom!

Rose's favorite things to do at preschool are dress-up and playing with the princesses.  But she has also come home with art projects that she has been so excited to show to me and Paul and Clara and always tells us "it's for youuuuuuuu!!!"

Their first day of school was actually the day of the solar eclipse and the teachers took the kids out 2 at a time with solar eclipse glasses so they could look at the sun with one-to-one supervision just to make sure none of them pulled the glasses off.  

Rose's extracurriculars include speech therapy (which we FINALLY have set up with the elementary school!), swimming (she's doing AMAZING and can totally swim in the deep end without any fear or hesitation and is working on her arm and leg coordination), and a tap/ballet dance combo class.  More informally, I kept our schedule open so that we can also do Music Makers each week which is a free song/story/playtime thing with a bunch of other moms and toddler/preschool aged kids from the stake.

Speech Therapy is going well so far - we really like Miss Penelope, her new teacher, and it's very apparent that Rose really needs the help.  She's super smart (we have zero worries there) and doing excellent with language skills as far as vocabulary and ability to tell a story.  The only problem she has is with articulating and she drops consonants all over the place.  It's going to be a lot of work getting her speech where it should be since she has almost every issue in the book as far pronunciation goes, but when she focuses, she can actually make a lot of the sounds.

It's more like her brain just isn't connecting the sound with the word and the necessity of saying the word exactly right.  Like she can make the "sssss" sound of a snake, but when it comes to saying "SNACK", Rose asks for "nack" and drops the "s".  When I tell her to make the "ssss" sound and model "ssss-nack" she always flips them and says "nack-sssss" about 7 or 8 times before she FINALLY puts the "ssss" in front of the "nack" sound like she is supposed to.  It's definitely a work in progress but I'm glad to have support and structure to start moving forward.

Rose is still a feisty little thing who is incredibly happy and hilarious as long as she is well-rested and fed but man-oh-man, if that girl is tired or hungry her crankiness is off the charts.  We love her so much though, even when she is being a grump!  I'm so excited to see how she grows this year at preschool!