Preschool Wrap Up

Way back at the beginning of last August, I mentioned that Beebs started preschool, and that I was going to be her teacher. As far as I can tell- that was the first and last time I mentioned preschool on here, which is just sad, since preschool was a big part of life from August 2013 to May 2014!

A little history- at the beginning of 2013, I began thinking about our preschool options for Beebs. I quickly started to feel very strongly that sending Beebs to preschool, as we had done with Sunshine, was not the right decision for her. I knew she would benefit greatly from the social interaction and learning opportunities that preschool would provide, but I still did not feel good about sending her to preschool. Instead, I began to feel very strongly that I should teach preschool. I pushed the feeling aside, convincing myself that Bruce would not be on board and that it would be too much for me to handle along with all the other things that keep me busy (ie- raising a family, being Primary president, still taking the occasional photography clients, caring for our backyard farm, etc etc etc) But the feeling kept coming. I finally mentioned it to Bruce in passing, and he was all for it. He was extremely supportive and helped me to talk out all the logistics, set up my preschool room and put together a basic curriculum. Before I knew it, I was advertising for students and it didn't take long for all my available slots to fill up.

Running my own preschool has turned out to be a great experience. I learned a lot last year, and I think my preschool kiddos did too! We had a lot of fun together, and I know Beebs really did benefit from the experience. In fact, she asks me almost daily when preschool is starting again, because she cannot wait to meet new friends and do projects. I am teaching again this coming year, and keeping Beebs in my class, and I am really looking forward to it. I feel like I have a much better idea of how I want to run my classroom and what I hope to accomplish with my preschool kiddos. Last year was fantastic, and I know this upcoming year will be too.

One of my favourite parts of preschool was giving my kiddos their yearbooks at the end of school. I worked really hard on personal yearbooks for each of them and as I finished the books and sent them to be printed, I thought to myself "All this work was in vain. They are 3 and 4 years old! They won't even appreciate these!"

I was so wrong! Getting their yearbooks was a highlight for each of the children. Beebs still loves to look through hers and explain to me in great detail each of the activities pictured. Since I did a terrible job of blogging about preschool throughout the school year, I'll sum up our whole year in this post by sharing the pages of Beebs' yearbook.

I am so grateful I took the leap of faith and started teaching preschool. It has been a wonderful experience for both Beebs and I and I cannot wait to see what the coming year brings.