Class Picture

Well, yesterday at preschool  we got our pictures back! And my oh my,  I'm glad I had decided only to order the little $15 class pic/individual  pic combo because they are sort of a hot mess lol. But  I wanted at least this to document her little class, even though I predicted the pics would suck :-P

And they we have  it! Ready for the hope chest, so she can look back at it and make fun of how I dressed her in 20 years :-P

She did the chipmunk smile! lol...good grief, I don't  know why she bites her lip like that for pics

(FYI, obviously these are all pictures of pictures so the quality in real life is better)

And now the class picture. I mean seriously, if you were a photographer who knew you were photographing a class of 3 year olds wouldn't  you bring a noise maker or *something* to get them to look at you for the picture? There are like 6 kids not  even looking! Shaking my  head here lol....

And here is a zoom in on Raya's favorite friends hehe...

The  girl next to Raya (in the white  sweater) is Miss C. and seems to probably be Raya's best friend so far as I can tell. Then Miss E. (lower right corner, in the solid brown dress) is  probably  the one Raya talks about second most. Raya's third friend is Miss M. (lower left wearing purple). Raya refuses to play with any boys, and she has really  never mentioned playing with any other girls (occassionally she mentions them in passing)...but in general it's always Miss C. Miss E. and Miss M. that she proclaims to love and adore! hehe

And the hilarious thing to me is that those three little girls are probably  the three loudest/most talkative/outgoing girls in the class. Miss Raya is definitely drawn to the outgoing kids and she loves to be a follower :-)

Lastly in preschool news, remember  my post awhile back about how I was boycotting the 5 morning a week preschool at the public school and I wanted to stay at this small private preschool next year for only 3 mornings a week?

Weeeeeeeeelllll......I signed her up on Monday for the 5 morning a week one :-o  And I'm not super happy about it!!! But long story short, the 5 morning a week one is way cheaper (we're talking it averages out to $2 a day! haha) and since pretty much *everyone* else was going for the cheaper option the private preschool doesn't think they will have enough students signed up to even run 4 year old preschool next year. So there was me and like 3 other moms who kinda wanted the 3 mornings a week still, but we'd have to gamble.....and if they didn't even up offering that class next year then we could possible be out of luck because the public school one fills up fast.

So anyways, next year I'll be dragging my butt to preschool 5 mornings a week, leaving at like 7:45am....cue my crying :-P  On the plus side? Alll the money we save will allow me to sign Brielle up for fun things like gymnastics that we can do in the morning when Raya is gone. And I'll get used to getting up and out the door early in the morning again, so when I go back to work the following year perhaps it won't  be such a shock  to the system haha. And Raya will  be pumped  to learn  that they raise chickens at her new preschool next year ;-)  However I was chuckling to myself about how different some parts of the country are for preschool. I keep reading about some people's kids basically learning to  start reading in preschool because by kindergarten they  start right in with sight words,etc.

Well the 5 morning a week preschool, through our public school system, specifically told us that they are still play based. Our kindergarten here is still the kindergarten I remember when I  went to school apparently (learning abcs and 123s), because the preschool said that next year Raya will work on recognizing her name and possibly a few letters, but they do no formal instruction on the alphabet  etc. (She already can recognize pretty much all the letters).  I guess at least this way I'm certain she'll  be prepared for kindergarten because it's all in the same building and  obviously  the preschool teachers know exactly what the kindergarten teachers right down the hall  expect....so if they say the preschoolers just need  to recognize their name when they start kindergarten I guess Raya will be advanced! haha  That's Iowa for you :-P