Elsa's School

Well, it's February, which means school registration for next year has come and gone. We took it right up to the wire, but in the end, we made our decision: Elsa's staying in 4K for another year, and will start 5K in 2012.

The decision didn't get any easier since I wrote about it a year ago. I guess, in the end, it really came down to a gut feeling on my part, which was backed up by the most of people whose opinions I sought out on this subject. The bottom line is that starting her later just seems like the safer choice. I'm sure she would have done fine either way, but I think there would be more possibility of problems if we started her this coming fall.

Among the many things factoring into our decision:

1. Elsa still cries pretty frequently. Her reaction to adversity is almost always to burst into tears. She doesn't get angry, she doesn't get frustrated—she cries. One day while driving home from school with Elsa's classmate David in the car, she got upset about something silly and started to bawl. Which prompted David to ask, "Elsa, why do you always cry?" I'm hoping she'll have a little thicker skin by the time she starts kindergarten in 2012.

2. This girl likes to be in charge. I don't know how much of that is typical 4-year-old girl bossiness that she's likely to outgrow, but I've seen her try to command her classmates and mold them to her worldview. She has particular ideas about how things should be done and doesn't hesitate to tell people about them. And yet Elsa also has a sensitive personality. She's very concerned about other people and making sure everybody's happy and being treated fairly. That strikes me as a potentially disastrous combination in the youngest kid in the class, especially when she starts worrying more about what other people think of her. One of the things we've been told by the Audubon teachers is that she will be more likely to be "a leader" if she's older. And, at least right now, she likes being a leader. It seems to be in her nature. So why put her in a situation where it's less likely to happen? That could be an invitation to preteen angst.

3. One of the things I heard from someone during this whole decision-making process was: "Why not let her be a kid a while longer?" And that's such a good point. There's a lot of pressure on kids these days, especially when they get to the high school years. More homework, more advanced classes, more extracurriculars and civic involvement required on college applications—kids seem like they have a lot more to worry about now than when I was in school. Even in kindergarten, all-day school is now the norm instead of half days. So why push her into all that earlier than we have to?

So, then came Part Two of the big decision. Back to Audubon for the exact same thing again next year, or try a different 4K program? Or both? (A different program in the mornings, home for lunch, and then off to Audubon in the afternoons?)

Initially, we had liked the idea of Elsa doing something a little more academic than Audubon next year. But I think we've since changed our mind about that. For one thing, Elsa already knows everything the more "academic" programs might teach (letters, numbers, sounding out words, simple addition and subtraction).

Also, one of the other Audubon moms, who has older kids at Elsa's future elementary school, told me something interesting. She said the teachers at Donges Bay Elementary have said that they can always tell which kids went to Audubon. They're the kids who ask a lot of questions. They ask questions like, "I wonder why ...?" and they ask follow-up questions to the initial questions. They're the kids who want to observe things and conduct experiments. And I realized that Audubon may not be focusing so much on numbers and letters, but they're teaching kids how to learn, which is just as valuable, if not more. Especially given that Elsa already knows all that stuff anyway.

As for the idea of doing two 4K programs, I'm leaning away from that now as well. It's that whole "give her time to be a kid" thing. This will be the last year I'll have both Elsa and Claire home with me in the mornings, and Claire is just now finally getting old enough to do a lot more fun stuff with Elsa and me. So I think we're sticking with just Audubon next year. No sense subjecting Elsa to all that running around. And it gives us our mornings to have some fun and have some girl time, all three of us, before Elsa is off to school full-time the next year.