It's Gobbles Time!: The Pre-K Life

I know, i know, I'm a stud with my haircut and shades!

It all started when Gobbles' new pre-K teacher came to the school back in March. She saw a place where morale was down with teacher after teacher leaving and unmotivated kids, bored with their routine of seemingly playtime every day. She decided that the kids in the class were unprepared to move up to kindergarten next year and began to whip them into shape. Sure, Gobbles and a few of his buddies still have a whole year before moving up because they're only 4, but he was along for the ride.

I've never seen my kid develop so much as he has in the past three months. Motivated and eager to learn, he has gone from writer of his first name to attempted writer of sentences, reader of 3-4 letter words, and (naturally) lover of math and science. His end of the year "report card" basically said he is ready for kindergarten now, and we couldn't be prouder of him.

When he's not asking questions about just about everything (What does perspective mean?) or lecturing his sister on how much different coins are worth (A dime is ten cents, even though it is smaller than a nickel. but you really want a quarter because that's as good as twenty-five pennies!), Gobbles is always saying something thought-provoking, matter-of-fact, or just downright, what in the world made him put that together?

- Most animals pee outside, but people pee on toilets. But if you're at the shore and can't make it back you can just pee in the water.
- Four fives are twenty and five fives are thirty. But so are three tens...
- On the way to school we always change around the radio until the kids decide the like a song. Gobbles passed up Oasis' Wonderwall for a Lemonheads remake of Mrs. Robinson. When the song was over, he made this random observation: Wonderwall is like Wonder Woman, and well, Mrs. Robinson has Robin in it - he's a superhero too.

Socially, he has his "in class" posse, his two bffs and doesn't like to venture outside of his group. He reminds me of myself when I was younger - he has no problems talking to anyone and everyone, (considering the number of birthday parties he's invited to he must have some interaction with a lot of kids), but being kind of uncomfortable with himself day to day so he prefers to stick with his inner circle.

Gobbles favorite extra-curricular activities are soccer and swimming. The former I've written about a few times, and he has actually declared that I don't even LIKE baseball, I JUST want to play soccer, always! The latter was, unfortunately only a temporary stint, where we had him enrolled in a two-week, an hour a day after school, swim course at the University. Our goal was that for Gobbles to be able to save himself should he stumble into the wrong pool. He passed with flying colors and even bravely jumped into the deep end and worked his way across one night, and the next night went off the diving board without hesitation (so fast that I captured about 87 pictures of him walking across the board and missed the actual jump in the water!). This brought me great piece of mind knowing that, on swim days at school this summer, where they're actually transporting the kids 4 and up to a pool for fun and lessons, he'll be a-ok not seeing 100% (well, barely 50% since they only make prescription goggles half of his necessary magnitude). Regardless, if he mistakenly ends up in the deep end he'll be able to get to the wall on his own.

Pre-K graduation was last week for 80% of Gobbles' class, and even though he'll still be there in the fall, of course I teared up at the thought of him growing up. He proudly sang the songs he'd been practicing for me in the car for weeks, kindergarten, here we come! knowing full well he's not going anywhere. I'm so proud of my boy for being the youngest to walk across the lawn and get his little diploma, and so ecstatically happy that he'll be doing it again next year, as I'm not ready for him to have to say goodbye to these kids, most of whom he's known for longer than his time in high school will. Love my Gobbles dude.

My first written sentence! It's supposed to say "I liked reading words", but
I sounded it all out myself! My mommy said she's proud of my writing but she
just laughed and laughed when I showed her my drawing and all the parts I included!