Nate graduated from preschool.

Today was Nate’s final preschool graduation – he’s headed to Kindergarten!  I’m so glad we decided to hold him back – this has turned out to be a great year for him and is now overly ready to go and I think he’ll do great.

This year of preschool had a rocky start.  Our friend and teacher, Ms. Joy, had to stop her usual routine because of an uproar that her new neighbor caused about so many kids being in her home. So in October, we had to start looking for different preschools that might have an opening.  Ali & I were lucky and found Ms. Sonia and Mr. Tom and they had openings for Nate & Daisy.  And it was M-TH from 9-12am!  It was their graduation today and I was reminded how lucky we were to find them – they were a great match for Nate for his year before Kindergarten.

When I first walked up to the door, Nate and another little girl were the greeters, shaking hands while saying “welcome to our school.”  They did a full program showing us a lot of the stuff they learned this year.  They learned a lot.  It was quite amazing, actually.  We have a joke around our house that whenever Nate comes up with proper grammar, a US President we didn’t know about, or something about the solar system we say: “let me guess, you learned it from Ms. Sonia.”  It was great having an older couple as teachers – they have a properness about them that is missing in the world today and I loved having their influence over Nate.  Nate developed a bond with both Sonia and Tom.  Tom was so cute with him helping Nate with all of his artistic and creative ideas as well as teaching him how to play chess.  Mr. Tom wrote me a note one day and asked if I could get Nate a chess set for home because Nate really had a desire to learn and he thought he could be really good at it. 

The proud mama is kicking in now but I was so impressed with Nate today at graduation.  First off, he was named valedictorian of the preschool class.  I’d never heard of such a thing but I thought it was neat for Nate.  He memorized his speech and did a great job today in front of everybody.  As they spent 30-45 minutes doing their program, there was hardly a time when I couldn’t hear Nate kind of “leading the class” with what to do and say.  I don’t get to see him in these situations very often so it was really neat to see him be a leader, he was focused & well prepared.  And as soon as the program was over he was laughing and having a great time with Daisy and his classmate, Juliana.

They had refreshments after the graduation and Nate was in heaven.  He kept saying “this is the best food ever!”  Overall, it was a great day for him.

We celebrated at Nate’s choice for dinner – The Olive Garden.  And we got him a little graduation present – a chess set.  I might need Mr. Tom to teach both Nate and I how to play.

Another great part of this year was that Ms. Joy was able to work it out for a small group of four (Nate, Daisy, Phoebe, Paige) to go to her house on Monday afternoons for a little time with Ms. Joy to do crafts, learn a little, and have fun.  Nate is also pretty lucky to be able to do all of this with his “cousin friend” Daisy.  They really are little buddies.

Nate has a really soft heart sometimes.  After his last afternoon with Ms. Joy, he came home with a darling note from her.  He asked Ali to read it to him on their way home and after she read it she looked at him and his head was down because he was crying that he wasn’t going to be able to see Ms. Joy as much anymore.  And then as we were writing Ms. Sonia and Mr. Tom a thank you note, he started crying again!  He loves his teachers.

Hooray for Kindergarten.  We’re ready!