Last day of school

I can't say that Trevor was sad to go to school today. I think it's going to take a few weeks for him to understand that he won't be able to go back to school for a few months. I tried to talk to him about it, but it was always in the future tense, so I don't think he got it.

However, in honor of it being the last day of school, I figure I should mention to you all the changes that I have seen in him this year that I attribute to preschool and the wonderful teachers he had. If not completely, they played a major role in.

The biggest one was definitely socially. Trevor had had a few playgroups, and gone to ECFE classes as well as Gymboree and such. But I hesitated bringing him anywhere or having a mommy friend watch him because I was so nervous as to how he would behave if another kid was around. I knew it was normal that he wouldn't share or even would fight in order to get attention but that didn't mean that I wanted to put another adult through watching him do those things.

Fast forward to today. Or actually yesterday. I've brought him to the park a few times now and have great confidence that he will play "nicely" with other kids. And what's really neat to see is that he is not always the "come with me" person. He will follow as well as suggest what to do. And because he usually gravitates to older kids, they don't have any problem saying no to him and he doesn't get upset.

When I went to observe at preschool a few times, I saw Trevor dealing with these conflicts and heard about them from his teacher during conferences. It was really something he had to learn. His friendships had formed with peers of his where he usually ran the show or at least when he suggested something, they didn't usually say they didn't want to do it. It was very interesting to see how he took someone saying no to him. But now, it's obvious he gets it. That he'll be fine and that he can still do something with his friend, but it may not be something that he wanted to do.

Another big thing that preschool contributed to was his interest in calendars and numbers. I had tried to get him interested in calendars, counting down especially to Christmas. And I knew he knew how to count at least to 20. But now, he can count to 109 before he asks for help and has his own calendar that he can flip around and look at things that are coming up, or have past. We count down to a lot of things and add things even after they happened. I know preschool had a lot to do with this. They have a calendar that they keep track of things such as holidays or simply how to tell what the date is.

Anyway, I sent Trevor to school with a thank-you letter to the teachers outlining these same thoughts and it seemed to go over well. It was good to give a little boost to the teachers. Just to let them know how much they meant to Trevor and our family during the year.

Ok....so that's school today. We are at the lake for the weekend. More to come on that. Looks like we are going to have decent weather!