Pondering Preschools

Since Emma is going to be 3 years old this fall (eek! how did that happen?!), we decided to look into preschools for her to attend rather than just the home day care that she has been attending. For a number of reasons - the first being that we are not happy with where the home day care that she is at (or was at - she is home with us for the summer). When we first started taking her to K&L's last fall it was wonderful. 2-family home with the upstairs being the day care and their family's house being the downstairs - so they were separate. Well in January or February, we showed up to drop Emma off one morning and suddenly that had changed. They had decided that since K's parent's were going to be moving in downstairs in 2 years that they were going to just go ahead and move their house and the day care in together. there goes the separation and that was one of the things that I liked about the situation. With the move upstairs for the family, their youngest child became very territorial (wouldn't you if suddenly all these kids and their families were coming into YOUR house everyday and playing with YOUR toys and sleeping in YOUR room?) and he started hitting Emma and being mean to the point where she would cry in the morning and get upset that we were taking her to K&L's house. She would beg to come to the gym with me. It broke my heart. And after talking to L about it, nothing was done. I witnessed the child push Emma down in front of his mother and she said nothing to him. In the fall, they did art projects - painting, gluing, etc. Now they give them coloring books and crayons/markers. No paint, b/c it could get on THEIR home furniture. Things changed after the winter holidays and the care that she was receiving started going downhill. We knew she was safe, but it wasn't quality care - just average. Plus, there was only one other child there that is her age - her friend Alexis and Alexis is gone by 9 a.m. b/c she gets dropped at 6:30 a.m. So she isn't interacting with others her age, and she needs that.

So....today we went to visit a real preschool. It was new to Emma, but it was old territory for me. We went see Groton Community School which is the preschool center that I taught at for 5 years prior to having Emma. I left GCS the summer after Emma was born. The school is wonderful. Fantastic staff, wonderful programs starting at toddlers through Kindergarten, gorgeous playground with a rubberized trike path, nationally accredited, a creative movement teacher comes in once a week, they have adopted a great handwriting program that they start using even with the young kids. It is just a great place. Emma walked right in and made herself at home. And the teachers that I taught with were so excited to see her since they hadn't seen her since she was a baby. They couldn't believe that she was old enough for preschool! The best part is that they have room for Emma and with my increased hours at the gym, it isn't going to be any more expensive than if we had increased her days at K&L's. So, I am crossing my fingers that my schedule can coincide with the preschool schedule and we can get her in!