Ari's First Day

It seems like only yesterday that I was lamenting about not being able to afford pre-school. Due to the outrageously expensive options available in New York City, I was resigned to the fact that I was going to skip pre-school altogether.

But then I found an affordable option. Ari goes one day a week and I attend with him. When we first entered the school I began to get nervous. Most of the other kids were following directions, meanwhile when I told Ari he had to sit in a chair he screamed and ran in the other direction.

But the head of the school reassured me:
"Don't worry," she said "let him play and when he sees you participating, he'll come around and join us." So I did. I let him go off and play with a train set. Eventually he became interested in what the group was doing and wandered over of his own volition.

Here are some of the things Ari did today:

• Played with choo-choo trains
• Participated in a group art project where the kids created a rain storm out of collage paper, cotton balls, blue and sidewalk chalk.
• Played musical chairs where no one was out
• And finally had loads of free-play time with which he located every vehicle in the place (including cars trains and boats) and hoarded them for himself.

It was a great time. We came home and he fell asleep immediately. In fact he is still napping at this very moment and it's been three hours.

I can't wait to see what we do next week!