Monday, September 30, 2013

The decision to pull them out of preschool

Bradley and Kiersten were in the most amazing preschool last year and we wanted to find them a preschool for this year so they don't regress what they know.
The only option we had was a three hour am class at one of the elementary schools. That wouldn't be so big of a problem but Adam and I only have one car that we share and our budget as a first year teacher does not fit a car payment into it. Adam travels to four different elementary schools and frequents the high school also to meet with the band teacher there. We tried taking them to school for the month of August but decided to pull them out in the month of September  and I would just teach them from home.
Here is what our schedule looked like those first couple weeks:

7:20 drop Adam off at one the four schools (he rotates daily)
7:30 hang out at the preschool parking lot until 8:00 when the school opened for drop offs
10:50 pick the kids up from school straggle to the car then hang out for another half hour
11:30 pick Adam up from his school, he drops us off at home, then goes out to the next school or to the high school to work on PO's with the band teacher there.

A little insight to his crazy schedule... Monday thru Thursday he goes to one of the four elementary schools to teach classroom music, recorders, piano, and guitar. In the afternoons he teaches beginning band at only two of the schools M/W at one site and T/TH at another. The high school band teacher picks up the other two sites.
On Fridays he spends all day at one site doing  K-3 music or whatever the principal wants him to teach for that day.

Man, that was exhausting typing that.
It was really hard on me driving around like crazy for our schedule and the kids were not happy with the new school. They kept asking to go back to their old school in Chico and to see their old friends. B&K are so bubbly and outgoing that they were scaring the other quiet children whom 90% of them didn't speak English.
I went crazy on Pinterest finding preschool ideas to help me teach them. One of the ladies in our ward does preschool at home for her two girls that aren't old enough for school yet and we combine one day a week for class. This post is a bit long so I will show you all of my crazy crafts and lessons on a different post.

I have noticed that pulling the kids out of class has strengthened their relationship with each other.  Usually we separate them in different rooms for nap time but lately, they always sneak in the room with each other and play. They rarely fight anymore and are connected at the hip. If you would have told me two and half years ago that they would stop trying to kill each other and be best friends, I would have never believed you!

Ok! On to our preschool ideas and lessons!

1 comment:

  1. We're doing homeschool preschool for Lara too. I waited until the last day to register for Head Start, so who knows if she'll ever get in. Because she has big brother Jaron, she's picked up a lot of the things she needs to know for Kindergarten already. You'll find out how nice that is with baby #3 too :)

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