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March 31, 2005
My mom gave us a whole bunch of toddler CD-ROM games that my youngest brother had outgrown, and I've been installing them for Zeke on an occasional basis. This morning we got out the "Fisher Price Farm" game. There's a part where you click on bunny rabbits to shoo them out of the carrot patch, and Zeke thinks this is hilarious. He has been playing the game and laughing his butt off for the last fifteen minutes.
In other news, preschool is going well, to put it mildly. He goes for three hours in the afternoon every day, and it's barely enough. The first day, I submitted some paperwork at the office and then took Zeke down to his classroom. He sprinted ahead of me and ran inside and promptly sat down in the big storytime circle. I was a little bit lost; the last time he was in daycare, which was almost a year ago at this point, Keith and I would routinely stay with him for several minutes at the beginning of the day, to get him settled in. This time, it was like I wasn't even there. I hesitantly asked one of the teachers if there was something else I was supposed to do? "Nope!" she answered cheerily.
Uh... okay... I'll be back in three hours? When I left, I watched from the two-way mirror in the observation room for awhile, and as far as I can tell, Zeke did not even notice I was gone. He was so ready for this that it is almost criminal we did not get him started earlier.
When I picked him up, I asked what he had done that day, and he informed me that he "played on the playground." This was not big news, as all the kids were out on the playground when I came to get him. (As a side note, you have not seen true chaos until you've seen 50 preschoolers swarming together over a playground. I use the word "swarming" advisedly, because I swear they move like ants or bees or other hive-like creatures. They sort of form into little groups, and maybe a few of the ones on the perimeter will break off and form their own little group, and sometimes the little groups merge into each other, and sometimes they just sort of run off on their own. It's fascinating to watch.)
Then I asked if he'd done anything in the classroom. "Yes," he said confidently. Then he thought for a long minute. "Ummm... I played on the playground."
So you can see what made the biggest impression on him.
Yesterday, his second day, he reported that he played on the playground again, but he also told me about storytime, which involved a story "with a wolf," and that his teacher showed him how to "sit like a pretzel." He demonstrated this for me at home, dropping to the floor Indian-style. I asked what else he did in the classroom, and he said, "Well... I did works!"
In the Montessori system, or at least in this particular Montessori school -- Montessori schools aren't really standardized so I'm never sure what parts of Zeke's school are Montessori-based and which parts are just particular to that school -- they refer to the different activities that the kids do as "works." There are reading works, and math works, and so forth. They have little stations set up around the classroom with different "works" and the kids can go and work with them as they choose. There's a curriculum that the teachers follow, so the kids aren't completely in charge of what they do, but in general it's a pretty lax structure. Anyway, I got a kick out of Zeke telling me that he "did works."
I asked him what sort of works he did, and he said, "Umm... I do not know!" I asked if he did reading works, and he said, very condescendingly, "No, those are not works!" So I guess if I want to find out what works Zeke does, I need to hang around and watch from behind the mirror.
The upshot is, preschool is a big hit so far. I will report more later.
Posted by Jan at March 31, 2005 9:05 AM