End of Preschool and the Zoo

Today was Bethany's last day of preschool. When I was asked a year ago if I planned to send her to preschool, I had said no. I always thought it was a bit of a waste. After all, no one I knew growing up went to preschool, and we all turned out well enough. I just didn't think it was necessary. But then I started thinking about Bethany, and the difficult time she had going new places and getting used to new people. I decided to put her in for the social aspects of it, and to slowly get her used to being away from home. It turned out to be a very good decision. Even if she's not ready for kindergarten yet, she's improved a lot this past school year. She may complain about going, but once she's there, she never looks back at me and she has a great time. She's learned to work in a group setting, and she's learned to play with other kids. Even with her two cousins in the class, she made friends with other girls in the class. All in all, it's been good for her.

Since it was the last day, the morning and afternoon classes met together in the morning and had a program for the parents and whoever else wanted to come. The kids stood in a couple of rows on the stage and sang some songs, then they each got a "diploma" for finishing the year. It was really cute. They sang one of Bethany's favorite songs, "Octopus" by Charlotte diamond. They also did Old MacDonald Had a Farm, but with a twist. The last animal the farmer had was a T. Rex. After all the roars, the last line was, "Old MacDonald has no more farm."

After the program, the kids went to the park to play and have lunch. Since Nate had the day off as part of the Memorial Day weekend, we decided to skip the park and go to the Columbus zoo. The kids have been asking to go, I think because of Bethany's Zoo Tycoon game that she plays a lot on the computer. It took us longer to get going than we'd hoped for, so it was nearly noon by the time we got there. We were shocked at how full the parking lot was. I think Nate counted somewhere around fifty buses. I'd expected it to be fairly empty still, since it was a weekday and before most kids were out of school, but it was pretty packed. We headed for the far parts of the zoo first, hoping those would be less crowded. They weren't at first, but then they slowly emptied out. By the time we left at about 3:30, the place almost looked like a ghost town. It was pretty hot, though. We had a great time, and also got a membership, so we can come back over and over again this year.