Our little princess has officially started Pre-School! Seems Mommy is having a lot harder time handling the transition than Sycely is, but I am enjoying the special one-on-one time I'm getting with Ella while Sycely's at school. Sycely's attending at the King Career Center's Early Childhood Education program. KCC is a career and technical school here in town that offers courses for high school students in various fields and prepares them for specialized positions in the workforce. As part of their high school program they offer an Early Childhood training program. This program teams the high school students with two certified adult teachers (whom I'm been working with for the last 7 years or so) in a lab school setting. The students learn about child development through classroom instruction, observation and developing and implementing activities for the children. They have lots of hands-on opportunities to learn about working with young chidlren. There are two sessions, morning and afternoon. Sycely's in the later class for two hours three days a week. There are 14 kids in her class, including only 5 boys! In addition to the two adult teachers there are about 12 or 14 high school student teachers. 
Two weeks ago we went in for "open house" an abbrieviated school day to let the kids get familiar with the classroom and meet their teachers with parents staying during this time. We pretty much went through the typical school day routine: free choice time, circle, lunch and outside time. Sycely is one of only a few students new this year so she was surrounded by kiddos who knew the drill. I just kept my distance and let her explore and get comfortable in this new environment and with all these new people. She was super open talking with and sitting with her teachers and already has a couple favorites, some of which, ironically are students in Daddy's class in the morning :)
Sycely started off her first trip to school with finding her name tag and dropping her things off in her cubby. Then she chose an activity-pets. They have a HUGE tortoise named Tort, she's been hearing about for a long time now, and a new bunny this year, too. Yep, a real live tortoise and the hare combo! From there she did some painting, some dressing up in dramatic play and then lounged in the pillow-filled bathtub for some book time with me. We followed all that up with lunch and circle and a trip outside to check out the playground then it was time to head home! Ahhh, our first step toward school success! 
When the time came, she was all ready-set-go for her first day of Pre-School all on her own!
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