It’s Time for School

I was a very tired mommy when I wrote that last post.  It’s a few days later.  Chloe is laying on me, tired, still sick and catching up on her episodes of Little Bill.  Daddy is upstairs sleeping because we caught what Chloe has.

My daughter is a preschooler.  And you know what that means, right?  That’s right, within the next year we’ll be putting her in Chinese school!  How’d you guess?  Chinese School.  Ah, I have so many memories.  I went for 4 or 5 years starting from when we moved here.  Although, I don’t remember anything that I was taught.  Languages don’t stick in my head.  I went to Chinese school and barely remember my numbers (although I have to admit part of that is because Chloe retaught me).  I had 3 years of Spanish classes in high school – I remember even less.

But I digress.  Chloe is much better at languages than I am.  My mom speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, some of her home dialect, and Vietnamese to her and she understands and can respond back.  So, off to Chinese school she will go, every weekend, probably starting late this year or early next year.  In fact, I’m pretty sure she’ll go to the same Chinese school that I did if we don’t send her to the one her cousins go to.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about her Spanish/Mexican heritage.  I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should get her a tutor or send her to school to learn how to speak Spanish.   The big difference is that my husband’s family is not at all like my family, in terms of being on top of keeping the language and culture in the family.  I know that I can’t just ignore that part of her; it is a part of my daughter.  I also realize that it’s mostly on me to incorporate what I can into her life.  I already get a little overwhelmed incorporating everything I can for her Chinese background, but I have my family to help me out with that.

I’m also a little worried about overwhelming her with school.   She just started preschool.  I’m going to wait until she’s been in for about a year before we throw in Chinese school.  I’m thinking I’ll have to wait again if we do decide to add Spanish into the mix, just so that it’s not too much at once.  I’m thinking because she’ll already be going to Chinese school and Kindergarten by then, maybe a tutor would be better.  I just don’t know if going to three schools will be too much for her (and as I’m saying this I realize I haven’t even looked into if they have Spanish schools, but if they do, I’m pretty sure we’ll have them here).

On top of all of that we do plan on putting her in Karate when she’s 5.  I think it’s making me tired just thinking about how much she’s going to have to do.

What Preschool Has Done to Us

So my daughter not only does not ever want to return to preschool ever again, but we have had 2 bedsheet changes, 4 changes of clothes, one ruined favorite blanket (*my* favorite blanket), and having to call over one poor grocery store worker to clean up puke – we’re not exactly excited about preschool either.  And really, puke is just a horrible thing to have to clean up.  I love my daughter – but ew, I definitely don’t love washing all her sickness out of our bedspreads and her clothes all night long.  And then having to hold your own nausea in after smelling it – so, long story short, we haven’t had the best night.  Okay, I don’t blame the preschool.  We did think she would catch stuff from the other kids, we just didn’t realize that it would be this horrible.

Preschool has been hard on Chloe, emotionally.  She’s not very outgoing to begin with, and very attached.  It’s hard for her to be away from me or someone that she’s attached to in a new situation, and I can count on one hand the number of times she has been without her parents and grandparents.  We know it’s just going to take time to get used to.  Her biggest problem is not knowing anyone.  It’s hard for her to take when her loving parents are leaving her alone with strange people, including other screaming children.  We try very hard to reassure her that we will be back soon, so far that’s not working too well.

When I first started back at work she was three months old.  It took about 3 weeks for her to get used to it, but until she did she spent the entire 9 hours crying and screaming ALL. DAY. LONG.  I’m not even sort of exaggerating.  I’m so glad that my parents love her and are patient with her because it was not easy.  They had to hold her 100% of the time, and got a lot of exercise walking her around the house (you know that kind of hoppy walk you do to calm a baby).  On the upside, Chloe and my parents are so close.  Their relationship has come to be such a beautiful thing.

Lesson learned.  It’ll take time.  Luckily she’s not crying all day long, just when we leave, when it’s naptime (she doesn’t take naps at home), and when she wants songtime instead of storytime.  Otherwise, she’s been okay, playing well, and coming home to tell us that she’s never going back ever again.   It will be okay – only 14 more years of school left (more if she goes to college, but I’m not going to be the one to tell her that at this point).   I hope she makes a friend soon.  I think that will help.

It’s Off to School She Will Go

Chloe has just been blossoming with her learning the past couple of months. So we’ve been on the hunt for a preschool for her. I did some research for a few weeks and we made appointments for 4 tours based on online research, personal recommendations, and closeness to our house.

These are some of the things that we wanted-
We wanted her to have plenty of time to socialize with the other children. Chloe doesn’t get enough exposure to other children. Sometimes we take her to play with her cousins or to the park, but for the most part it’s just her with one or two adults. We want her to learn how to socialize and interact with her peers, and start having friends because this is something she has been craving lately.

We want her to be challenged to learn, to keep her love of learning new things/concepts. We want the importance to be placed on maintaining a desire to learn. Right now she is very focused and excited about learning how to spell and write words, and I would like for her to maintain this because she is very proud. I think that in the long run this will help when she becomes stuck on a concept, the encouragement to work on it so that she can be proud when she does get it.

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So, with that, preschool hunting it is -

The first preschool was an AMI Montessori school. The facilities were nice. The director was really nice. The teachers were older, each had over 20 years of experience. There were three classrooms around her age group (the classrooms each have a certain range of ages), and the older children had a different section of the school. They were very large classrooms. Each of the children were working on their individual projects – they were all very well-behaved, which is surprising in a very open environment like that. The thing that we didn’t like was the price, which was over $100 more than the other preschools, and that there weren’t many group activities.

The second preschool was called a hybrid Montessori school. The facilities weren’t amazing, but it was clean and nice and had a huge playground – but just not posh like some of the other preschools we visited. They have 3 classrooms total, divided by age ranges (2-3, 3-4, and 4-6), but it is flexible to the needs of the child (for example, there was one 3 year old in the 4-6 class because the teachers assessed that she was ready for the higher class). All of the teachers here were younger, probably around my age or slightly older. The classroom that Chloe would be in has a schedule like this: 8-noon are all group activities, things like singing songs or storytime; noon to 1 is lunch; 1-2 is naptime; 2-6 the children work on individual projects and each student works one-on-one with the teacher at some point during this time – there’s also two snacktimes and recesses, but I forget what times they were. We really liked the daily one-on-one time and that the curriculum is more flexible.

The third was a preschool that was attached to a public school and taught very much the same way as a public school. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that both my husband and I don’t have very high opinions of the public school system – especially the public school system in California. But we did try. The director gave us the tour. There was basically one large building with 3 separate rooms, which divided the children by age. The director said that every once in a while they took a “field trip” to McDonald’s, which is about a block away on the same street – that was so not okay with my husband, he ranted about that for quite a bit after we left. They do have a lot of fun things for the kids, especially during the summer – like a petting zoo and swimming. The curriculum for my daughter’s age group was: learning to recognize shapes, colors, capital letters, and numbers. I tried to talk to her about where Chloe is at and that she is focusing on learning how to write, to which I got the response, “Oh no, we don’t let them write on paper because they don’t know how yet.” To which my jaw dropped on the floor and I had to stop myself from running from the building. We asked about one-on-one time with the teacher and were told that the only one-on-one time a child gets is usually if they are having a hard time with what the students are currently learning – this we had a huge problem with.

The last preschool had the most toys and had Chloe’s vote for the one she wants to attend! It was the most posh. It actually looked really nice. Everything was brand new and sparkly clean and there were a ton of toys everywhere. It was one large room that was divided into three for the three different classes divided by age. The teacher was nice. She was probably slightly older than we are (I know I keep mentioning the age of the teachers – it’s because my husband didn’t like it if they were much older because I think he feels like they can’t relate to the children as much – I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it was a factor for my husband so it’s something that I had to keep in mind). Their curriculum for Chloe’s age is focused on shape, color, letter, and number recognition, and cutting and pasting – and the hope is that by the time they move up to the next class they will know how to write their own name. So the curriculum is more advanced than the third preschool. Also, hot lunches and snacks are all provided (only snacks were provided at the other preschools). This actually won big points for me, not only because they’re provided but because they didn’t just have pizza and chicken nuggets on their lunch menu. The menu actually looked not only nutritious, but also had foods that are from a wider range of cultures than just typical school foods – for example, they had Hainam Chicken on Wednesdays. I’ve never seen that in a school (maybe I’ve been away from school too long). That stood out and impressed me a bit.

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It was a hard decision. We narrowed our choice down to the hybrid Montessori school and the last preschool with all the toys. It was hard and was a very long discussion; we were impressed by both, but we ultimately decided on the hybrid Montessori school. Our hope is that the way in which they teach there will help her thrive more than the other schools. We already checked for availability and they have space for her. We’re going to start her in January. To start we’re putting her in for 2 full days a week. Hopefully by Fall she’ll be in full time. I hope that it goes well for her, and I hope that she likes school.