It's been a good 4 weeks now and I can confidently say that Kielle is fitting right in a Little Apron Academy :-) PHEW! It took a gooooooood minute for things to fall into place, but with help from her teachers, it only took about two weeks, to reach success! hhaahahah
Let's look at the progression from "What are you doing leaving me here?!?!" to "Bye Bye Mommy. See you later!"
Week 1:
I'll deem this - Loud Week. Pretty much Kielle cried the whole week. Her teachers said that she would have fun playing, sometimes, but then when she realized I wasn't around, she would break out into her high pitched wailing.
Notice how in the picture above there is a progression of her crying and then leaving "rug time". Here's the first picture blown up:
Look at the kiddos in the back are covering their ears!! Eeeeks. And then there's poor Ms. KaDonna trying to calm Kielle down. Lord have mercy! ahahaha I'm glad they put this picture on the daily report, because I'm sure some of the kids were going home mumbling something about a girl in class who cried ALLLL day. Now the parents can see there was NO exaggeration! A mess. At least she looks good in her little brown dress! hahahaahha
Week 2:
Now we move into Realization Week. It was finally starting to hit Kielle that this is her life now. hahahaha She was a preschooler and she didn't have a say in the matter. So, she started to enjoy the lessons more, but there were still bouts of crying from time to time.
Daddy said that every time he dropped her off in the morning, Kielle would walk straight to her cubby, put her book bag away and go sit down for breakfast. The whole time, though, she was muttering and whining under her breath. ahhahahahah. She will always have the last word whether we understand her or not!
You can see how puffy her face is in the photos, but at least she's sitting with the rest of the class. Progress! Kielle's favorite time, though, was still leaving at the end of the day hahahaha. She even walked with Ms. KaDonna to the elevator, albeit reluctantly.
Week 3:
Cruise Along Week :-) Kielle has started following directions, eating all her lunch, and willingly going to school each day. Now when Daddy goes out in the morning she jumps from the table to put on her socks. She says, "Wait Daddy, school time." She's completely over me. Every now and again Khyri will say, " Mommy can you come to school with us today?" but that Kielle?!? - nope, she says nothing. I think she's forgotten me already! booooooo. I am really glad though that she has grown to love school, her friends, and her teachers. I think the curriculum is wonderful so I'm glad that now she can just relax and experience all that Little Apron has to offer :-)
While Kielle makes new friends and learns new things, I get to have mommy/son time with Khyri. Instead of making two trips to the school for pickups, Khyri and I hang out everyday while Kielle's class has playground time after their nap and snack time.
At first I would just bring Khyri along with me while I did different errands. I realized, though, that we were still wasting gas, so I wanted to do something closer to the school. We found a little table across the parking lot from the school building that is just perfect for us to do little activities each day. Khyri never knows what I am going to pull out of the "learning bag", so it's always a surprise. The very first surprise we did was putting together a dinosaur skeleton that I scooped from dollar tree. Side note *Dollar Tree is THE BEST! there are so many affordable activities there.*
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One of my favorite activities is doing interactive drawing with Khyri. So I'll say let's draw a person and I'll draw the head. Then I'll say, "Wait, this person can't see. What's missing?" He'll say eyes. I'll say, "But, dust is getting into his eyes. How can we keep the dust out?" Eyelashes - and it just keeps going. He draws everything and then at the end we name the picture. (Shout out to Amy and Jennifer!)
We also play memory, which he is awesome at! This little boy's memory is a
beast! I need some gingko biloba STAT. He's already beat me twice. Since we're outside, we also look for things in nature to play with. I like messing with the ant mounds. Yes, I know its dangerous, but to see them scatter is so interesting to me. Maybe we need to get an ant farm for the house.
We also do workbooks and practice our lettering - Thank you Mama Chin, Victor and Veronica :-)
Khyri's favorite activity is putting together puzzles. I grab all of these from Dollar Tree also. He'll do any type of puzzle - Mickey Mouse puzzles, The Avengers, Construction, whatever looks cool.
Its shaping up to be a wonderful fall :-)
