The End of the First Year of Preschool

Today was Mr. TOF’s last day of preschool for the year.  He has loved preschool, really loved it. Every single day he was excited to hop in the car and drive down the hill to school, and he’s grown in confidence so much in the last few months.

Each day on the way to preschool we counted school buses.  The high school near the preschool has a starting time just fifteen minutes or so before Mr. TOF’s preschool, which means that usually right as we are driving down the hill  to school there are scores of buses driving up the hill after they’ve dropped off their students at school.  Some days we saw only one or two buses.  A lot of days we saw between eight to ten buses.  One day we hit the absolute jackpot and counted 23 school buses.  You can only imagine the excitement.

Mr. TOF is the third kidlet I’ve sent to preschool since we moved here.  YaYa went to preschool when we still lived in Wisconsin.  It’s been so interesting to see how each kidlet has responded to preschool.  Mr. SP still talks about how he loved pounding nails into wood and writing speeding tickets for kids riding bikes in the red room at school.  The Banana loved having friends and playing with other people.  She loved playing dress up and cooking in the play kitchen and creating all sorts of dramatic play scenarios with her friends.  Preschool was all about people for her.  Mr. TOF also loves having friends at preschool.  He has loved the sensory table.  At the beginning of each week he predicts what might be in that sensory table.  Even more than that, though, Mr. TOF really latched on to the learning themes at preschool.  He loved learning about spiders (they have BLUE blood!)  and penguins, dental hygiene, environmental sustainability, and nutrition.  He evaluates the nutrients of every meal I serve the family and decides whether or not I’m doing a good job of cooking healthy food.  Mr. TOF especially loved all the special guests that came to talk at school.  It was a very good year for special guests.  There were parents who were nurses,  policemen, firefighters, coast guard officers, and there was even a pilot for Delta who came and talked about the planes he flies.  The policeman and firefighter brought along a police car and fire truck, which the kids got to examine up close.  Best of all, the coast guard officer even toted up a rescue boat on a trailer and let the kids crawl inside and run some of the controls.  He has talked and talked and talked about those experiences.

These images were taken last week.  I love all of his expressions.  He loves his baseball hat.  He wears it everywhere.  A couple of his friends at preschool noticed that he liked it so much, and they started wearing baseball hats too.  Izzy, a spunky little girl who has always totally cracked me up,  has a blue cap just like Mr. TOF, and they love being “twins.”