Eli started pre-K!

Eli has started pre-K and is loving it!  Wooohoo!!!  He is in an AM pre-K class from 8:30 to 11am monday thru friday a block and a half away from our house.  His teacher is Ms. McAlister (SUPER nice) and the assistant is Mrs. Luebbert (Mrs. Lue).  It's hard to tell exactly, but I think there are about 15 kids in his class.  All of them are Spanish except for Eli and one other little girl.  It would be awesome if he picked up some spanish, but I think they all speak English in school.

His first two days were only an hour each and parents were allowed to stay.  I stayed the first day and was surprised to see a normally super social Eli sit off in a corner and play by himself.  When talking to his teacher, he used a super super quiet voice.  Day two, I dropped him off and he had a great time.  That week, he kept telling me he was playing by himself and wasn't ready to meet people yet.  He really enjoyed going, though, and never put up a fight or complained about going.  He was sad on Friday when I told him he had two days off.

His school is new... built in 2010 and his classroom is great.  There is a playground out in the back and his teacher said they will go there every day.  It's very hard to determine what exactly his day is like, cause I don't have much interaction with the teachers and his response to "what did you do today in school" is usually "that's my secret."  But from what I can tell, this is what his day is like....  When they first get there, they go and hang up their backpacks in the closet and then have breakfast.  It's usually "cereal squares" and something else like toast, bagels, pancakes, etc.  Eli told me that all of the other kids have juice, but he told the teacher he's not allowed to have juice and instead has milk every day.  I was SO proud of him for that!!  At some point, they do some kind of alphabet activity, some singing, some sitting on the carpet, some reading (sometimes? hard to tell) and play outside.  Sometimes he tells me he plays with blocks or legos and sometimes he brings a picture home.  It seems like they mainly use colored pencils there.  He has a few good buddies.... Isiah, Jerrick, Amore and one other guy.  They like to run around and play snake games and chase games on the playground.

He's had to sit in the thinking chair almost every day and when I ask him what he did wrong, he always tells me "I fell down on the carpet."  I finally got a chance to ask Ms. McAlister what that means yesterday and she told me he's often jumping around, etc, when it's quiet time.  Not suprised at that!  She's been working on getting him to contain his jumps for when they go outside.  Good luck with that! lol.

So far, so good!