Thinking About School Already

While pregnant, Joe & I had a plan (our first mistake...hah!) for after Will was born. Julianna would start her toddler classes in May & that would give me 2.5 hours twice a week to spend time with just my little man & get errands done. Julianna is so ready for being in a school situation.


But as everyone knows, you should never make plans while pregnant and assume things will go normally...or is it just our family? Along came Mister Will, and nothing has gone according to plan, but that's ok because he's awfully dag-gone cute.


Germs once again have topped our list of enemies. After hearing multiple times, from multiple doctors how bad it could be for Will to even get a cold, we made the decision to not send Julianna to school yet. All those other germie kids make me nervous. Now I am NOT saying that all of other people's kids are germie, but I was a teacher, I know how many germs are floating around classrooms...A LOT & it only takes one sick kid to get a whole class sick. Sigh. She is so ready to be in school. Her teacher still comes out to see her twice a month, but that's not enough (especially now that the hour her teacher is here is divided between her & Will). She needs more, she loves learning!

I have been trying to "teach" Julianna some since May (I am in no way actually doing anything structured, just misc. things a few times a week). She loves it and has caught on to so many things very quickly. But she needs more.

Learning colors...she's got all but blue & red down...we're working on red now.

We've also done shapes and some numbers.

Her teacher has suggested, if we are comfortable with it, that she start pre-school in January when she turns 3. Wow. Pre-school?!? Already?!? We are so torn. She would do amazing with school. It would be so good for her to be in such a social situation & play with kids her own age (not 4 months old...heehee), and to have a structured learning environment. I think she would flourish.

This is where we hit our dilemma. We have to chose between keeping germs away from Will for as long as possible (sending Julianna to school in January would be sending her in the middle of RSV season...yikes!) and enrolling Julianna in pre-school where she will benefit so much. What's a parent to do? Luckily we still have almost 6 months before she turns 3 to figure it out. And I have decided to start using a free pre-school curriculum I found online to try and teach Julianna more than I have been. It's more structured and should only take a small portion of our morning a few days a week. I am so not a homeschooler (I know my limits) and I am definitely not an early childhood teacher (give me middle schoolers any day), but this is the best answer I have found so far to our problem. I am hoping to not fail...but would even settle for just not failing miserably.

**Once again blogger is being weird and has made some of my paragraphs all run together...sorry.