So about nursery school

Where I grew up the birthday cutoff for school was the first day of school, here its December 1st. Seems a bit arbitrary to me, even crazier is how they do school districts here. At home it was an entire country comprised a school district, here its done by the town/village so we could stay in our county and move 10 min away, to an entirely different school district where the birthday cutoff is September.

Makes no sense. But that doesn't so much have to do with my issue at hand more just that I think its really weird. Right up there with Smart cars and mullets.

Anyways, the cut off is December 1st. Dash-2 misses it by FIVE days. That's right. FIVE.

I've heard that with boys sometimes being the oldest in the class versus being the youngest isn't such a bad thing, what with the whole boys-mature-later thing, but five days is a bit of a kick in the teeth. Especially with such a bright kiddo.

The in thing to do is to send your kid to a nursery school program which is for three year olds, typically a 2 day program for 2 and 1/2 hrs. Should Dash-2 go he'd go Tues/Thurs from 9-11:30.

Then the next year is pre-k , which up here is not provided by the school district. So the year after this year, Dash-2 will go to pre-k which is either a 3 day or 5 day program again from 9-11:30.

There is a great debate going on in the flyboy household. To send or not to send?

I'm not opposed to sending my kids to school. They get great skills from interacting with the other kids and learning to be away from mom. Plus the whole educational aspect of it.

Or so I thought.

Then I spent $1200 bucks on nursery school and 1400 bucks on prek only to be scratching my head wondering what the hell my kid learned.

Well he did learn the words to the dreidel song. Which, given that we are Episcopal isn't too useful. But I'm sure he'll file that away for later in life.

Seriously though, we don't know what the hell they taught him and what are they going to teach Dash-2?

I'll admit I think dash-1 needed some work on social skills and interaction, but not so much dash-2. He's one of those kids who can sum up a situation and adapt to it, ie the kid is a people pleaser.

{You might find this hard to believe but he gets that from his mother}

We recently got dash-1's progress report and things back from his school year, it was interesting, virtually identical to that at the begining of the year. He went in knowing all his letters and knowing about half the sounds, his handwriting, it could have been copied it was so identical.

Now I know that as parents we bear responsibility for working with our kids at home. I hardly figured his preschool would teach him everything he needed to know.

Frankly, most of it was learned at home and seeing as though they said he was one of the brightest kids there I do tend to attribute more of his academic stuff to us not them. I am just curious, what did he learn there?

Most of the time was spent in "free play". Free play is not what I was paying for. Free play is important and necessary, but not as much as they were getting.

Teach my kid something. And not the dreidel song, I want a song about counting and letters dammit. He's going into Kindergarten next year not having any real "group instruction time" and I'm not pleased about that. They did circle time as a class but rather then ever work with the class as a whole they would simply pull them during free time to color their letters or whatever.

Small instruction time is useful but so is group time.

We were told by the school that they since he was so far ahead they would be working on sight words and word recognition with him. That never seemed to happened. I'm not sure why.

But they giant six act nursery rhyme play that took two months to prepare for did.

I do know he didn't really like going there. For some reason it wasn't so much a fit with him.

Or with us.

The other parents sing the praises of the two teachers and flyboy and I have always felt very eh about them. Nice enough but I'm not sure what all the hubbub is about from the other parents.

They were plenty nice but something didn't quite seem to click with us and them.

So now here we are, Dash-2 is supposed to be starting the three year old program this September and we are wondering.... why bother? He's already counting to 15, shoot he can do some simple addition and subtraction, he recognized a fair number of letters, he can spell and recognize his name, his handwriting needs work but, we are working on it.

I am hardly an advocate for homeschooling.

Quite frankly the thought of my kids being home with me when they could be spending all day in a classroom is enough to reduce me to tears. Despite having some classroom experience I'm the first to say I'm not equipped to teach my kids. That's what schools are for.

But I'm confident I can figure out nursery school.

Surely my college education can not be out done by a three year old.

We are thinking that perhaps we should put the tuition money in his college fund and I can just get some books {do they make homeschooling programs for nursery school?} to work with him at home.

Maybe our expectations where too high? We've been told we have that problem sometimes.....

To those of you out there, would you or did you send your kids to a three year program? Should we just go with our gut and keep him home another year?

sigh

Dash-3 is sick. Again.

Wednesday night him and I were up walking the floors. From 1 am to 5:30 he screamed, he kicked, he cried, he writhed in pain. He finally crashed at 5:30 and I was up at 6:45 with the phone in my hand to call for an appointment. To say I'm running on little sleep would be an understatement.

Yesterday was spent at the hospital, xrays were taken, blood was drawn, pee was collected { and let me tell you he was catheterized, it took three times, and judging fromt he screaming and thrashing he didn't seem to enjoy it}.

So far it looks like a urinary tract infection. They wanted to see him back today and we found out that he also has a throat infection. But at least he seems some what on the mend. Fantastic.

Except that the medicine gives him explosive diarrhea.

He's on his third outfit of the day and I heard him exploding while I was typing the line above. Even my littlest has a good sense of timing.

Flyboy leaves on Monday for a bit and Tuesday dash-1 has oral surgery and is being put under General Anesthesia. He's unaware of all of this. I'm guessing that I'll be walking the floors with dash-1 Tuesday night.

Oh and dash-1's face is no longer swollen. Only he just either stepped on a bee or was something took a bite of his foot because now that is swelling.

I wanna vacation. I need a vacation.

And dash-2? His underwear is still on backwards.

Rank sticker... nay or yah?

You know what I've been seeing a lot of lately? Rank stickers on cars.

I'm undecided on these things.

I get the point of the full bird or the General's stars since there are reserved spots for those ranks on post {or base} and well.... your a General. But in most other cases I have to admit I lean towards not getting the point of them.

Part of me says, hey good on ya, be proud to be a Lance Corporal, the other part of me says, hey who cares. And I don't mean that in an insulting way, I mean that in the your rank is your rank.

And for that matter, seeing as how I treat everyone with respect on base, as I do anywhere, does it really matter to me if you're a Captain? Congratulations on working hard {although lets all admit that attaining rank, sadly, does not always correspond with actually doing your job or being an all around stellar person but rather your number in the deli line but that's a side note}

Do you really need it on your car?

I think sometimes it matters also where it is on the car. On the back of your car right by your Marine Corps emblem sticker seems less obnoxious then putting it right by your sticker to get on base. Does the civilian gate guard really care if you're a Corporal or a Gunny? {For the other branches those would be E4 and E7 respectively}

Especially since with the exception of the nice full bird or star stickers the other ones just aren't meant to be placed up near the base stickers so they seem awkward and out of place.

Not to sound jaded or pissy or anything, I'm just puzzled by the rank on the car thing. You worked to earn it, but, again I find myself wondering why is it there?

When flyboy was promoted this last time I got him a rank sticker as a joke. If looks could kill I wouldn't be here penning this post.

Flyboy tends to be a work is work, I am who I am, rank is my rank and lets leave it at that kinda guy. He doesn't see the need to advertise being a Marine {although I keep trying to explain that the high and tight is a bit of a giveaway} let alone plaster his rank on his car.

What are your thoughts? Is your husband's {or yours for that matter} rank on the car?

And as I sit here ready to hit publish I wonder if I should just scrap this post. Is this going to turn into some uniform purse post that lives on forever? I'm going with my gut and hitting publish.....