There is something about this time of year that makes me think about school. Perhaps it is a deeply ingrained sense of anticipation of a new school year which is left over from my childhood. You see, I was one of those kids who loved school. This year, my school related thoughts involve assessing Dylan’s readiness for preschool and assessing a few preschools in my community to see whether there are any that are a good fit for him.
As luck would have it, the other day when I brought Dylan to one of our favorite playgrounds, I got to learn a little bit about the preschool which shares a parking lot with the playground. We were getting out of the car, and Dylan was just about to run towards the playground when he stopped to listen intently to something. “What that sound is?”, he said, looking up at me as he does many times each day when he hears something that he is curious about. I listened for a moment and then told him that it was the sound of children playing in the yard at the preschool. He wanted to see what they were doing, so I took his hand and we walked across the parking lot to check it out.
As we stood by the fence, Dylan and I looked into the yard. There were a few children playing with a water table and one little boy was riding a bike that looked similar to the bike that Dylan has. One of the teachers saw us at the fence and came over to say hello. She was nice enough, but as we both looked into the yard at the kids playing, I did not get any overwhelming sense that it was the preschool that Dylan would attend. When I asked Dylan if he wanted to go to the playground after a few minutes of watching the kids at the preschool, he willingly took my hand and walked away from the fence. He really did not say much about what he had seen, it really did not seem to interest him at all. Dylan is definitely the type of kid who will let you know (about five hundred times, and even long after the experience) if something really appeals to him and his lack of comment made me feel like there was no desire on his part to partake of that experience. Perhaps I am being silly, but I am thinking that either one of us or both of us will have some sort of a feeling if we find a preschool that is truly a great fit. So, I have ruled out one preschool as a possibility and it will be interesting where the remainder of our preschool searching adventures take us.