to kindergarten or not to kindergarten.

That has been the agonizing question on our minds for the last year or so. Between a summer birthday that would make him one of the youngest five year olds in his class, his penchant for playing over anything learning related, and his high energy, we made the decision to wait until six. Some days I am absolutely convinced it was the right decision and other days are the ones where I doubt it all. I have a decent number of friends who work in K-12 and the reviews are mixed. At the end of the day, it was our decision and we're owning it.

We're using this 'extra' year to try to firm up the basics: the letters, the handwriting, the numbers, the socialization, While he doesn't completely understand why most of his friends went to kindergarten and he didn't, he understands that he went to their birthday parties a long time before he turned five.

And I jumped on the chalkboard first day of school bandwagon, and I love it! Such a cute way to capture that special 'before' moment at the beginning of the year.

Oh, and another thing that we're doing is a program through our local library called 1000 Books Before Kindergarten. Reading books to N is part of our after school and before bed routine anyway. I'm all for supporting early literacy skills and getting that jump start on the desire to read! Here's little man after he finished the first one hundred books!

library card.

We got back from vacation this week and, much to my happiness, N and I still had a week off! We hit up our local library this week for some free fun! I'll admit that I haven't had the need to go to a non-collegiate library since high school. It was interesting to go back in and see everything as a 'real' adult and check out important things like the children's section, and the proximity said section to the restroom. Very important things! As we jump into his last year of preschool, I really want to feed his and grow his interest in reading and books as much as possible.

While the bulk of the children's section caters to toddlers, N fell in love with the puppet theatre! If only he understood that his bit on 'when puppets attack' should be at an 'inside voice' noise level! :)

Nate also got his first library card and cleaned out the 'Little Critter' section (all five books of it). Still, he was very excited to find ones that he hadn't read yet! 

While you can't see it in the pic at the library, N was appropriately dressed by donning his Reading Rainbow shirt.