Kai and I have been skipping out of preschool. We're preschool dropouts!
Not really, we still go, but only for the first hour of free choice activity at the beginning. We weren't behaving very well for circle, so now we're ducking out early. I feel strongly about not rushing Kai into things. He has a lot of catching up to do, but I want to let him do it at his own pace. Besides, he's not really old enough chronologically (let alone developmentally) for this group.
So, what do we do when we skip out? We go play! Just down the hill from the preschool is Boulevard Park, which is right on Bellingham Bay. I love the bay, it's very sheltered and on calm days it's just like a big lake. But it's salt water and has tides. If you were to sail out of it into Puget Sound, you could keep on going right out through the Strait of Juan De Fuca to the Pacific Ocean. Heck, you could probably sail right on to China if you knew what you were doing! I have no idea what I'm doing and don't even have a rowboat, so we kick around the shoreline and throw rocks in the water. Here's a couple more wonky photos I grabbed with the cell phone...

- CLICK ON PHOTO TO SEE SLIDESHOW -

Tina teaches the Two-Day Class at Children's Co-op Preschool. The co-op is a great program that's coordinated by the local community college. The program involves parents in the classroom and is a lot of fun. We enrolled both our older sons in this co-op when they were little and were very involved in the program. So much so, that Tina is now the teacher!

Her class meets on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and is for 3 and 4 year olds. On the mornings Tina teaches I arranged my work schedule so I could be home with Kai. While it's great that we are able to always have one of us home with Kai, it's gotten a bit boring around the house for him; we don't have a very big social network of 3 year olds in our personal life these days.

One of the recommendations that came out of the early childhood development evaluation we had done for Kai was to get him into a preschool program. Rather than a remedial program, it was suggested that we try to find a program with "regular" kids. Hmmm... where could we possibly find such a program? While the answer seems obvious, it wasn't quite that easy. Even without his developmental delays and language issues, Kai isn't chronologically old enough to enroll in the co-op program. Still we thought this would be a great thing for him, so Tina discussed it with her facilitator from the community college and the co-op board parents. They agreed that this would be a good thing for him, so we decided to bring him to the class and have me there with him full time. I am not one of the regular working parents, I focus pretty much exclusively on Kai. I make sure he stays on task and doesn't disrupt the program for other parents. Also, as he isn't potty-trained I cover that area as necessary. We have been bringing him to co-op preschool now, since Thanksgiving and it's been wonderful! Kai loves being around other kids, and it gives him an opportunity to experience a wide variety of activities. I have been able to pretty much just be there to "spot" for him. initially he was pretty reserved, and kept to just the "sand" table and water table. But as of last week he has really started to break out and try some different things. He doesn't like to do the art projects as they are usually messy, and he is very apprehensive about anything that's sticky or gets your hands dirty. But he's playing in the kitchen and even with the playdough a bit!

So far we have been having him there just for the open activity portion of the day. We've tried the "circle" a few times, but he has a hard time focusing for that. Lunch is also difficult for him, so I have just taken him home for lunch, which means he also misses the "Big Room" (large motor play) and story/closing circle.

Tuesday was the last day of preschool before Christmas break and it was also Kai's birthday, so we decided to try having him stay for the whole day. This went VERY well! He enjoyed celebrating his birthday at circle - getting to wear the crown and sit in the special chair, etc. He didn't eat too much at lunch, but enough, and he got to stay for the Big Room.

I have to do less and less for him as he finds his comfort zone. Some of the things you would expect to be difficult for him are second nature; things like lining up to wash hands, sharing toys... yet these are the things he must have obviously dealt with daily at his home in China.

It's funny being in a preschool with Tina again. This has been a part of our life together since high school when we took an early childhood development class together. In college we worked together in a daycare, and as young parents we taught Sunday School together. For the last few years this has been Tina's exclusive domain, but now that we have Kai, we are both in it together again.