Getting ready for Pre-K

Ben will be going to pre-kindergarten in the afternoon five days a week. It's through a program for 4 year olds. We debated back and forth about him starting kindergarten early, since his birthday precludes him from meeting the chronologic age of acceptance, but ultimately decided those rules exist for a reason and he would wait another year. So the pre-k option is great, because he'll get exposed to other kids and rules and other authority figures who are not related to him, etc. So this afternoon was also the "Meet the teacher and see your classroom" thing.

Excitedly running up the sidewalk.

He looks pretty proud right? The Pre-K entrance is on the opposite side of the building from the rest of the elementary school, which is nice.

So we get in to the hall and find out that his class isn't finished yet so we can't go in. Um, how is that supposed to help kids feel comfortable come Monday? I don't get it at all.

So we got to see his class list instead. Woohoo. That was about the excitement of it all. His teacher seemed ok. I'm not allowed in on the first day to take pictures of anything. We have to just drop him off at the front door...Um, ok? She tried to say it was a school rule because of separation anxiety, but I'm not sure I'm buying it. Well I'm certainly not buying it, but I'm deciding how to deal with it.

The most exciting part, for all seriousness, was this...

We got to go into the boys bathroom so he could see where he'll go. They even have this step mounted to the floor, so the little kids can reach the urinals.

The funniest part of the whole visit was on his classroom door there were paper apples with each kid's name on them. Some were green for the morning pre-K kids and the others were red for the afternoon kids. Ben looked at them, saw his name on red and said, "Why are some red? Is it because we're the bad kids?!" I thought that was pretty funny. He's used to Addie's school which uses a red-yellow-green light system for behavior and you never want to be on red! I explained it had nothing to do with that.

So Monday he'll be on his own. He get his own locker too, which is odd, but the whole thing may be a year of oddities.