Tag Archives: school

Back to School Night

Sep
21

Posted by: Josh

Last week was Back-to-School Night at Eleanor’s preschool. You didn’t know preschools had them, but now you do.

Part of Eleanor’s program is that her teacher helps the kids to keep “journals” to track their progress. Basically, the teacher asks the kids to draw whatever they want, and then to describe their pictures. Here’s our favorite journal entry:

These are Eleanor’s snakes.

Aren’t they awesome? We were really impressed. They are very clearly snakes, you guys. So good!

Other projects include painting with pasta (still not entirely sure what that means, but it apparently it happens). Here Eleanor depicts the aftermath of the Mississippi overflowing:

Pasta painting explained (I still don’t get it, but it looks delicious).

And of course, a face gluing. I think this is supposed to be me, during my peacock phase a couple months ago.

So preschool gets a pass, as they convinced us that they aren’t torturing our daughter and that she is actually having a pretty entertaining and edu-ma-cational time. We already knew that of course, by the way that Eleanor frequently throws a fit and refuses to leave school at pick-up time. We really like Eleanor’s teachers, and the way they refer to the kids as “friends” (it took us a little while to figure out they were talking about one of the kids when they were telling us a story about the lunch one of their “friends” was eating the other day). And it was revealed that it was in fact her teachers that were slipping Eleanor gummies! Busted! They were pretty proud of Eleanor for covering for them though, and it seemed like a bonding moment for teacher and “friend.”

Hello there Fall…

Sep
07

Posted by: Maggie

Well, it’s pretty much fall. I know it doesn’t officially start until the 22nd, but it’s September and Labor Day is over, so in my books it’s fall. Note my lovely new fall header. It’s pretty fantastic right?

So let’s talk fall. Fall is my favorite season. Okay, maybe not my favorite, but it’s definitely in my top 3 favorite seasons (I’m not much of a Spring person.) Really, I just love when the seasons change, so when a new season arrives it is always my favorite.

Fall is pretty amazing though. It is filled with wonderful feelings and memories. For me it is a season of beginnings, fresh starts.

As a kid, it meant new clothes and school supplies, seeing old friends again and the possibility of making new ones. It meant cold windy days, but warm afternoons under blankets with a good book.

As a teenager it meant plaid skirts, flannel, and hooded sweatshirts, it meant My So-Called Life reruns would begin and it meant long dark evenings just sitting in my car talking with friends.

In college it meant a new year of classes to choose, professors to meet, papers to write, new pens, notebooks, and textbooks to buy, all the things I loved.

Now, as an adult it means Eleanor starting real preschool (with HOMEWORK! we’ll talk about that soon!), high heeled boots, sweaters and jackets, lots of brown and gray and burgundy, it means so many different wonderful soups, and fall produce-squash and sweet potatoes, cool days and warm evenings of wine or hot chai tea, waking up when it’s still dark out, and the sun setting earlier and earlier.

Don’t you just love the fall? I’m so happy that it’s finally here!

Eleanor’s New School

May
25

Posted by: Maggie

This month Eleanor started at a new daycare.  We made the switch for a few reasons and are really happy that we did.

First, I’ve been so busy with work that I need Eleanor in daycare full days rather than half days. And the full time program at her old daycare was a lot more expensive than their half day program. That wouldn’t be a problem if we were completely happy there. But we weren’t.

A few months ago Eleanor’s teacher left the school. We had loved her and weren’t totally thrilled with her replacement, who was supposed to be temporary but had still not been replaced after more than a month.  The new teacher wasn’t terrible or anything I just didn’t have a great feeling about her. I don’t think she was the right teacher for Eleanor.

Eleanor had started crying and asking me to stay when I dropped her off in the morning. She had never really done that before. I think that was partly due to her general crankiness from all the sleep problems she was having, but I think that she also just wasn’t enjoying school as much as she had before. She never talked about her new teacher. Never even mentioned her name. This was odd because she talked about the 3s teacher who was in her classroom when she arrived every morning, the assistant director who drops in on all the classrooms throughout the day, and even the school cook who brought her breakfast and lunch. But she never mentioned her teacher. Kinda weird, right?

So when I started getting really busy and realized that I needed full time daycare, we thought it was a good opportunity to check out some other schools. We settled on the one that had been our second choice when we had originally looked at daycares. We really like Eleanor’s new teacher. And I love that instead of having classrooms solely based on age like her old school (infants, toddlers, 2s, 3s) the new school bases it more on developmental stage and switch classes based on the school year and not by birthday. So her group of 2 year old toddlers are all together and will stay together until they go to Kindergarten. They will all switch from their room to a preschool room in June for the summer program and stay into the fall and rest of the year, and their teacher will go with them. At the old school the kids changed classes after their birthday so there were always kids coming in and out of each class. Here, unless one leaves the school or new ones come in, Eleanor will stay with the same group of kids as long as she is there. And it’s about $70 a week less expensive than her old school would have been.

Although, we knew that it was the right thing to do to switch schools, we were concerned about how she would handle the transition. Especially because she’s never napped at school and has never stayed a full day, but she’s done really well. The first week was a little rocky. We got some reports of her “testing” the teachers a little, taking other kids snacks she wasn’t supposed to have because of her dairy allergy, not participating in activities she didn’t want to do, not napping, but she seems to have settled in and is doing really well. She’s being a little more cooperative, eating her own food, and taking naps every day. The best part is that at the end of the day she doesn’t want to go home. She always wants to stay at school.

The other day she said to Josh, “Daddy, I like my new school. I run that school.” (She’s just like her mommy!) So, I’m pretty sure we made the right decision.