We toured North Sound Christian School today with Alyson.
She amazes me every day with her understanding and insights, her academic knowledge, her ever-questioning nature. We’ve decided that even though she’ll be quite young, we need to give her the opportunity to apply for early admittance to Kindergarten.
We spent about an hour at the school today. We love that it’s just blocks from home. It’s a nice small K-6 Christian school. The first classroom we had the opportunity to visit was really cool, built for kinesthetic learners. Christian would really benefit from a class like that. Working on reading and math skills while doing active balance activities seems to be something he’d respond to. I guess that’s a down-side to putting Alyson in private school. I’ll wish we had the funds to send all three there.
We also had the opportunity to see the library, gym, and multipurpose room. We met with the kindergarten teacher (Alyson picked up a sponge and started cleaning the classroom) and Alyson got to have recess with the kindergartners. She loved the playground the best. The Kindergarten teacher has been there over 20 years and has a child of a former student in her class. Everyone we ran into on the tour seemed to have had at least one child in her class. All academics and extra curricular activities are in the mornings. Afternoons are lunch, recess, fun stuff, and recess again.
So our next step is submitting the application, which includes an application, financial contract, parent participation contract, and a reference from one of our church leaders. Then testing will be scheduled to assess her readiness.
If she’s accepted, she’ll be able to attend half time until she turns five, then she’ll be able to stay for the afternoons. She’ll be on probation the first few weeks, where they’ll reserve the right to pull her out. They also reserve the right to insist she repeat Kindergarten if that’s the teacher’s recommendation at the end of the year.
If she’s not accepted or they find she just isn’t ready, they also have a preschool program that we can look in to, and onsite daycare.
The principal did say his initial impression is that she’s young, but we all want what’s best for Alyson, so we’ll go through the testing, and if she does well, we’ll give her the chance to start in the fall as a kindergartner.
We’ll see how the testing goes, but honestly I feel we were led to this opportunity. I had completely resigned myself that she’d be waiting another year until I got in touch with this school on a whim. We’re praying that however it goes will be in Alyson’s best interests.
