Gemma starts preschool

Gemma started preschool this fall. For the longest time, I wasn't sure what to do for her. The preschools near us kept raising their rates and/or making the school day longer. I prefer shorter days, and obviously less money. It was hard to rationalize sending her to preschool for the cost of it all. I kept putting it off in the spring until a friend reminded me of a preschool program that one of our district high schools provides. You pay a super low semester rate and your child is in their early childhood development program. It is for 3ish hours a couple mornings a week. The high schoolers take all the child development/education classes their junior year and then run the preschool their senior year. There is at least one high schooler per preschool child. And then of course, the main teacher who oversees everything. There are about 15ish kids in the program. Because the school uses the first 6 weeks of the school year to get everything ready to go, Gemma didn't officially start pre-k until early October.

She has loved it so much. I have been impressed with the programming and education so far. The high schoolers are much happier to do crafts with Gemma than I am. She likes dramatic play time and the library. I get lots of pictures from the school and Gemma is always happy. Several families from our stake and the neighboring stake also have children in the program so we carpool and help with rides if necessary. The kids know each other pretty well too.