First Day of School for My Little Caterpillar

Yesterday was Aiden's first day in the toddler program at The River School! They have two classes for his age that meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he is in the Caterpillar/Butterfly class. I've already said it, but I just can't say it enough, this school is AMAZING! Now, I think I may be a little nutso for taking him here, because to get there, which is 37 miles from our house, took over TWO HOURS ... with the last four miles taking a good half hour! I obviously need to find a new route because that's just pure insanity. The drive home was MUCH better though and we were home within 45 minutes. So, needless to say, Aiden was late for his first day ... oh well, we'll get it down.

On our way to school!

Aiden's cubby with the caterpillar he colored at the teacher's homevisit.

Aiden had a wonderful first day! For the last week, we've been talking to him about school and showing him pictures of his teachers, the classroom, and the playground to help prepare him for the transition. Once in his classroom, he immediately wanted to get down and play and from then on, he didn't look up more than twice to see if we were still there. He was good to go. His speech pathologist told us he cried a total of five minutes for the three and a half hours there. Pretty good for a boy who's never left his mommy's side!

"I'll be just fine mom and dad!"

Snack time!

I LOVE to draw!

Here's what Aiden did on his first day (per an email from his teachers, which we will receive each day detailing specific activities from class):

• Sensory Table - Use cups to scoop and pour colored water.
• Circle Time - Teachers will introduce our name song and we will meet a caterpillar and a butterfly puppet.
• Dramatic play/theme - We will play with caterpillar and butterfly puppets and pretend to feed them the food from the story of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".
• Art - We will use dot markers to decorate caterpillars for our classroom window.
• Books - "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle and our class book, "Caterpillar, Caterpillar, Who Do You See?"
• Mouth Time - We will have fun with bubbles and introduce our Mouth Time character.

The day ends with some fun playground time!

Aiden was very excited to see us at the end of class. After his daddy picked him up, he took one look at his teachers, waved bye-bye and blew them a kiss. The boy was ready to go. He was asleep within five minutes in the car. They wore him out!

Oh, and a lot of these pictures of him throughout the day came from his teachers to us in an email, detailing Aiden's first day! Did I tell you how excited I am for my little monkey?!?