When I first visited the Early Childhood Center, ten years ago, I was amazed at all of the action going on. The energy was a buzz with children painting, cooking homemade applesauce with Linda, chasing after bunnies or zooming cars around on a road that cut through a city built out of blocks.
I said to Thumper, with his extremely high energy and a knack for making very messy wonderful paintings, that I thought we had finally found him the perfect school, his third pre-school in his two years of living.
As he got older, his energy increased but Linda never stopped for a second to complain, always greeting him with sparkly eyes and an all knowing smile, for that is what she thrived off of, the ability to direct a childs energy toward the world of imagination and play.
As the years went by, I began to question her on what kind of academic learning he was getting. She never failed to enlighten me with her knowledge and philosophy that kids learn best through experience. She was always calm, always patient.
Now Hootie-Hoo is walking over the rainbow bridge to take all that he has learned up with him to the big school and into life and I am having a very difficult time accepting that this is the end of a long and wonderful journey. A journey where I absorbed important values and life messages from all of the teachers here who I would list individually if I had the time.
These two rooms down here are magical and nurturing and everything I could ever have dreamed of for my three rambunctious boys. I will miss visiting this safe and wonderful world three times a week and I will miss you Linda for always making sense out of every tantrum and every enigmatic behavioral crossroad.
I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for filling us and our boys with this wonderful sense of self that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives and I thank you Linda for cooking up the most incredible learning center and providing me and all of your teachers with the necessary ingredients to bring out the best in us and our children. I love each and every one of you truly, madly, deeply and I will miss you.
ACS and ECC campus
Jillian's Real Life 
Wow Jillian, you just described the most wonderful learning environment we all should have for the rest of our lives. It should not stop there and I congratulate you on paying attention and having seen this learning opportunity for all of you.
And the pictures are just so beautiful and it is very appropriate that in such a wonderful environment such wonderful learning takes place.
xox Wilma
.-= Wilma Ham´s last blog ..Context is still King, I still mind what happens. =-.
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Yes Wilma, I couldn’t have asked for a better school for my boys to grow in. It’s all just so sad that it is coming to an end. Have you caught on yet that I’m not good with change? I like constants.
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I sobbed when both my children graduated pre-school (and kindergarten, first, second, third grade!) I think readers are going to think the Wernick girls are cry babies!
I love the way you describe Tucker going to the end of the rainbow.
How wonderful for you and the boys that they all had the same learning experience for pre-school. Since it is the start to there schooling career, it is important that the start is a good, nurturing, e that builds there egos.
I think i need to go back to pre-school.
99 degrees in boston today and can’t think straight not that i ever can, but a good excuse!)
Of course because I am so busy, not a minute to my self, while multi-tasking…had to harass ex-boyfriend about a mean comment he said about me (but denied with all his heart and soul) why why why can I not let things go???
We clearly really need to discuss my dating on line!!!
Love you and everything about you.
You will get thru this period of your life. I swear. Something good comes out of everything
xoxox
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Mouse,
I wish that we could be together at all of these momentous hurdles through life with our children. I’m sayin’ if we weren’t such cry babies than I’m afraid of what we would be.
As far as the rainbow analogy, I really was not being poetic as all the kids actually walk over a rainbow painted bridge when they graduated but thanks for the credit.
What x boyfriend is talking smack about you? Let me guess, it’s the one with the cheshire cat smile stained with tobacco.Let’s sick Wade on him.
There is nothing more to discuss about your dating online. Trust me…
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No!!!! I never want to say goodbye to pre-school. Tell me I don’t have to….
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Peryl I really am having a hard time accepting that my baby is growing up and so I still treat him like a baby, except for when I am yelling at him, and he still acts like one. Is that bad???
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*snif* that brought tears to my eyes.
Precious childhood, so fleeting.
Oh, so very fleeting.
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Yes Alexandra, although it seems so difficult at times, we must hold on to and snuggle with our little ones for as long as we can.
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