Leah's ready for school....

Greg and I spent part of our Holiday break checking out preschools for Leah. Preschools typically begin registering for the next school year in February and since Greg was home over Christmas, we used that time to visit some schools. We wanted to be prepared with our choice as soon as registrations began.

I selected 3 to choose from. We were no longer happy with the school Abby attended and so we asked around and got some suggestions. We looked at a Lutheran church, Methodist church and a Baptist one. (We wanted to make sure that most of the denominations were covered since we already tried the Catholic one with Abby.)

The first one we went to was New Hope Methodist in Arnold. We found out that we knew 2 of the teachers there and liked the intimate feel as well as the times she would go. Greg really liked the low tuition. She would go twice a week from 9-11:30. We would have enough time to get home and get lunch and a nap before having to pick Abby up. Then when she's 4yrs old she would go 3 days a week to build up to kindergarten.

Second on our stop was St. John's Lutheran in Arnold. We loved the teacher she would have, but the preschool was housed in the same building as K-8 grades and we didn't like the feel of a little fish in a big ocean for her first time attending school. It also was a bit pricier and had a lot of fundraising requirements.

Last on our stop was Concord W.E.E. at Concord Baptist in South County. We LOVED this school. The curriculum is awesome and it’s a newer school. The kids are also broken into younger and older classes by their birthdays. Here she would go Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30-2pm and she would get to eat lunch there.

So after much deliberating, we decided to send her to New Hope Methodist. The timing is more convenient since I would drop her off right after dropping Abby off and we would make it home in time for her and Cameron to get their much needed naps.
Originally we were looking at schools for next fall. We had no idea that she could still enroll for this year. (With her birthday being the end of August, she had missed the cutoff to start this previous fall.)

When we were at the first school visiting, Leah actually cried. She asked us when we were leaving so she could get to work. When we told her we were just visiting, that's when she cried. She's ready for school. At this point the director told us that she could start in January and they had spaces open for her. We didn't even know it was an option and had to think about it. The more we did, the more we realized we didn't want to miss this open window of her being ready to start school. What if over the summer she became clingy or decided she didn't want to go to school, then it would be harder to start her.

We get to meet Leah's new teacher tomorrow and she will get to officially start on Thursday. She is so excited to be a big girl going to school. She told me she wants to take all her toys to show her new friends. It will be so quiet around her on Tuesday and Thursday mornings with just Cameron and me, but I am so happy she gets this experience.