Preschool

Gunnar finished up preschool on Thursday, May 24^th. I can’t even begin to explain what a blessing preschool has been in our lives. I was so worried about Gunnar socially after leaving Fort Lewis. Gunnar loved interacting with the kids at daycare usually at least twice a week, plus there were many kids for him to interact with at both Sunday and Wednesday night services at our church, so he was going from having quite a bit of interaction with other children to none when we moved.

Our church up here at the lake has two other little boys that are there off and on. They are brothers who are each just a couple months younger than our boys. So when they are there and when they decide they want to play in the nursery it is good. But other than that there is not a lot of opportunity for interacting with other young children up here. When we heard about the preschool that started in January, the month we moved here, we were thrilled. I probably would have paid big bucks for Gunnar to attend, but we were told they only thing required was that Gunnar was potty trained. Score for us. We were psyched as Gunnar was indeed potty trained (and he only had one accident and that was on a day when 4 kids peed their pants and they had an unusual schedule). The best part of it all is that it didn’t cost us big bucks, instead it is free! It is two days a week for three hours on those days.

Gunnar did pretty well he was the second youngest in his class that ranged from 4 kids to 15. He wasn’t always interested in their activities and if he got bored with something he would often just get up and go play. Luckily he became more actively engaged as time went on.

We have been impressed with all he has learned. He says his alphabet flawlessly, will point out random letters and numbers to us on signs and identify them correctly. He knows his shapes and can count to twenty if he is focused. Although if he messes up, which if it is going to happen he skips number three, then he just starts throwing random numbers out there and ends with ten or twenty. Colors….colors are his major weakness. We are constantly pointing out colors at home, he practices them at school, practices them at home, but he just doesn’t get it. It drives me bonkers. It does give us something extra fun to practice this summer, I can thinking up all sorts of games that involve identifying colors. We will also continue practicing his other skills (especially counting), and I would love to teach him to write his name over the summer. AND, we can’t forget we are working on him NOT speaking in third person. He will say “Gunnar wants candy” instead of “I want candy.” It’s cute and I was hoping he would just figure it out on his own, but I’m beginning to think it is something we might have to make him more consciously aware of.

I would love to get Ryker potty trained so he can start attending as he really wants to stay and go with big brother when we drop him off, but Ryker really isn’t ready yet and with the new baby coming potty training will have to wait a bit. I am hoping maybe by next January we can start thinking about potty training him, he will be almost 2 ½. Ryker does attend a lap sit story time at the public library here. He was actually the only “lap sitter” attending for a while, but now we have a little girl who regularly attends with us and today some 7 month old twin boys attended. Ryker’s behavior during this time has gone from interested to completely not interested! I actually just end up wrestling him most of the time, which gets frustrating. During this 30 minute time we usually sing songs, and look at books together. The songs are fun and interactive, but Ryker just wants to run through the library and push books over. They do capture his attention when they whip the bubbles out. I think they try to judge by my level of frustration with Ryker when to start blowing bubbles. This summer we may stop doing the lap-sit and start going to preschool story time with Gunnar now that preschool is over. I’m hoping that Ryker will see the older kids and want to copy them. It could go either way…but at least then Gunnar will be able to see his friends from school, and I know there is no way Gunnar would stay interested during the lap sit time, so I think preschool story time will be our best bet.

Keeping our kids socially engaged is so important to me, yet living in a very small and rural community makes his a bit of a challenge!