Summer School

Well friends, by the time you read this I may be somewhere vomiting (or worse) in fear: today is Jonah’s first day of summer school. I know what you’re thinking: “Dang Jenny! You hate spending time with your kids in the summer so much you signed your baby up for summer school? That’s HARSH!”

I can promise you that’s not exactly what’s happening here. Having Jonah at school fully-dressed in the summer at the crack of 8 a.m. (when his regular school starts at 9:10) and having to drag the big kids along with me to drop him off is not exactly for my convenience. (His teacher is going to see two very different Jenny’s every day, “Drop-off Jenny” who will look like she just rolled out of bed because she DID, and “Pick-up Jenny” who will be perfectly made-up and coiffed, naturally.) But when his regular teacher told me about a free 5-week summer science lab our school district offers for preschoolers, I knew I had to apply for him to get in. Because A) He would LOVE IT and B) the absolute best thing for his language development is for him to be with his peers, and 3 months without that was going to be a LOOONG time and a void that I simply cannot fill no matter how hard I work with him.

SO – for the next 5 weeks, Jonah will be in class from 8 a.m. -12:15 p.m. Monday-Thursday. This is nerve-wracking for me because it’s 90 minutes longer a day than he is used to being in school. It’s also at a different building, but it’s the one that is closest to my house, like, 3 minutes tops, which is convenient but still will be an adjustment (he will still go back to his regular class in the fall.) He will have a new teacher and 2 new teacher aides, and there will be more kids in the class than he’s used to. Also, his regular class is made up of half “typical” kids and half with IEPs, and this will just be a mish-mash of whoever signed up. The other thing I’m a bit worried about is his food allergies. He will eat breakfast and lunch at school but I’ll most likely just have to bring his food I think (he eats breakfast at his regular school and I always just bring him a banana) but I am going to have to find that out for sure tomorrow.

ANYWAY. I am excited for him because I know he’s going to love it (if he gives it a chance. He LOVES going to his regular school), learn a lot, and have some really fun hands-on science-y experiences and hopefully pick up a lot more social language from his peers.

But today, the first day, I will spend 4 hours and 15 minutes worrying my head off while he’s there.

On the positive, side, though, the big kids have VBS this week so I will also get to worry for about 3 of those hours BY MYSELF. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

If you read this in the morning, say a little prayer for me and especially for Jonah. I am praying he loves his 5 weeks of summer science lab and learns a ton!