Cooper's Open House

All last year, we knew we wanted to start Cooper in pre-k this August.  With Cooper having a middle of the summer birthday, we had a decision to make.  Do we make him the oldest or youngest in the class?  Since his birthday is in June, he will either start out the year as the age that everyone else will turn, OR he won't turn that age until after the school year is over.  For example: in Kindergarten, most kids start at 5 years old and turn 6 during the year.  Well.  With Cooper, we had to decide: Do we start him at 5 and he stays five the entire year (and doesn't turn 6 until the summer after Kindergarten ends), OR do we start him at 6 years old and he stays 6 the entire school year (which is the age most of his classmates will turn during the year).  We really put so much thought into it.  We talked to our families.  We talked to several different teachers of younger grades.  We talked to friends.  We talked this subject to death.  In the end, we took into consideration that Cooper is a boy (and will probably mature later) and that he is still playing catch-up in the speech department.  With both of those things in mind, we decided to make him the oldest in his class.  What this meant for preschool is that, even though he turned 3 this past summer, he would start pre-k in the 2.5 year old class.  This will actually mean that he has 3 years of pre-k.  With LL, we didn't start until she was in the 3 year old class (what Cooper will do next year), so she only did 2 years.  

It actually ended up working so well, and we can tell that God was all over this situation!  His preschool has two 2.5 year old classes.  They ended up making Cooper's class the "older" class (with the kids who are either already 3 or turning 3 very soon after school starting).  This means that there isn't a huge age gap between him and the other kids!  He also ended up getting two amazing teachers.  Mrs. Kori is actually one of my friends.  So she's known about all of Cooper's speech issues since the start.  And she has had daughters go through speech therapy, too.  Mrs. Lisa goes to church with us, has two young boys, and (you guessed it) has had a son go through speech therapy (with the same speech therapist that Cooper had!).  I'm telling you - it worked out so much better than I ever could have imagined!

Cooper's school year didn't start until after mine, so I was actually pretty bummed thinking that I was going to miss open-house and the first day of school.  Thankfully, I have an amazing academic coach at school who watched my class for me for a little bit one day so that I could go to Cooper's open house really quickly.

I wish I had more pictures, but I don't.  On the way in, Cooper was nervous and was not having pictures.  Then, when we were in the class, we were either watching Cooper or talking to the teachers, so we didn't take pictures then.  On the way out, Cooper cried (because he wanted to stay!), so this is the only one we got.  Which is actually pretty funny to me.  :)

I am so excited to my boy and the opportunity that he has to go to school and have some time that is all just for him.  I know he is going to love it and grow so much this year!