About April of last year I got a letter from Hailey's preschool letting me know that the teacher was going to be retiring and they would no longer be offering a high school preschool. The preschool was set up as an advanced childhood development class for the high school students. Mrs. Bankhead had been teaching for, I think, 23 years and was wonderful!! Each preschool student had a high school student assigned to them as their teacher under the supervision of Mrs. Bankhead. The kids loved it. They loved their teachers, the one on one attention, and a field trip to the wild animal park or the zoo each semester. I loved it. I loved their teachers, I loved that it was only an hour and a half, and I loved that it was only $50.00. You couldn't beat it. It was the best.
I was really sad when I realized that Sydney wasn't going to get this same experience. I looked around at the other preschools in the area and quickly realized a couple things, 1. They all required that she be there for a minimum of three hours. Sydney is a Nov. baby. When she started preschool she would only be two. That felt like a long time for a two year old to be gone. 2. They were all at least triple the price. That just didn't fit into the budget. What to do!? After a little thinking and talking to friends at the park, I decided that I was going to be her preschool teacher. I have done Joy School before, I have worked in primary FOREVER, and I have been a Mom for 8 years. Hopefully through all these experiences I learned a thing or two about teaching 2-4 year olds the basics of a school setting. After making this decision I talked to Mrs. Bankhead and asked for advise, I talked to a kindergarten teacher in my home town, and I talked to my cousin Buffy who had run a preschool for the last five years. With all these words of advise and referrals to many resources I set out to find students and get my lesson plans together. To be quite honest I didn't have to "find" any students. Once you let the word out in a LDS community that you are going to be doing something like this it doesn't take long for people to sign up. When preschool started I had five students. I was so excited and a little nervous about how it would all work. The kids were wonderful. Soon we were up to our elbows, literally, in paint, glue, crayons, markers, and construction paper. We were singing songs about everything from the days of the week to Christmas. We learned how to hold pencils and scissors, how to write from left to right, and our shapes and our colors. Somewhere in the middle of all the chaos and learning I realized I LOVED what I was doing. I was always thinking about My Preschool and how I could make it better, how I could help my students learn better. I loved My Preschoolers too. I loved their cute little faces, the silly things they would bring to share, and how much they loved me back. One of the best days was near the beginning of Dec. when I had the kids do a worksheet where they had to use about four of the skills we had been working on all semester. They had to sit in their seats, they had to listen to directions, they had to find the color of marker I told them to, and they had to color the shape I told them to. All of them could do it. I was so excited I told everyone who would listen about it. I got a lot of strange looks that said, "AND...." It didn't impress too many people, but to me it was AMAZING!!
About the end of November I started to get a feeling that I needed to ask one of the other moms to take over in the new year. I would always push it away. Why would I want to do that?! I loved what I was doing. I had big plans, crafts, and ideas set up for the next semester. The day Ryan came home and let me know he had been laid off I finally saw the WHY. I don't know what is going to happen in the next few months, but I do know that My Preschoolers will be in capable hands and won't have to be jostled around in the middle of the semester. I know that their transition will be easier because they will start out with her after a break and will be excited to learn more. Even though I know the WHY, and know that My Preschoolers will be fine. I am going to miss them a lot. I already miss them. When Sydney first found out I wasn't going to be her teacher anymore, she cried. I wanted to cry too. I LOVE My Preshool, and My Preschoolers! Thank you to the parents for sharing their kids with me. A big thank you to the kids for coming to play. Riley, Annika, Rebecca, Shon, and Sydney.
