Shayla, my four and a half year old daughter is now successfully enrolled in her first full-time Pre-K. We just enrolled her in a Pre-K program at a local elementary here in our town. We are excited for her for the learning and the social integration that this will initiate, and I am excited for me and the possibility that I will be able to get back to some kind of work however partial. This will be her first bonafide Pre-K experience. She went to a 1/2 day - Pre-K last season, but it was short lived as she was the only English speaking child there. We didn't realize that it would turn out to be that way initially when we sent her, but upon discovering that there were not enough staff to meet her needs as far as translation and communication went, we pulled her out. It was starting to become obvious at home that the experience was frustrating her.
We are hoping that this current program and school will be a good fit for her. We think that it will be. It was 'Meet The Teacher' day today and so we went and did just that. We like the teacher and have a good feeling about this.
Shayla has been requesting more Spanish language instruction, and while the other Pre-K environment didn't work so well for her, it was due to the inherent structural, program, and management flaws within the organization itself and not due to a resistance of Spanish language integration for Shayla. Fortunately for us, this school has a 'dual-language program' starting at the Pre-K level. So we are looking to get Shayla into one of those classes. I speak rudimentary Spanish, which is plenty to get along with if you're traveling in a Latin country or many others, for that matter, but my skills are a far cry from developed and smooth 'conversational Spanish'. We are hoping to give Shayla a leg up on developing a possible bilingual skill set.
This Pre-K schedule is a full one at M-F, 6.5 hours per day. I am excited for her for the learning and the socialization with her peers that this will provide, but I am also excited to get back to some kind of consistent work, which is it's own form of excitement both for me and my mental state (read: being around other adults as more than being a dressing on a salad or icing on a cake) as well as the supplemental effect that it should have on the family's finances. Yay, yay, and yay!