Life with Zachry
Posted by mommyfranklin at October 30th, 2008
When I got my jobs, I immediately began looking for a “school” for Zachary. I didn’t want to put him in a daycare, but in a school. In a perfect world, I would have found a place like where he was last year in Lubbock. There are really three “school” programs in town for three year olds. I’ve heard good things about all of them, but none of them really had hours that would be very convenient for us. I decided to call them anyway and see what we could work out as far as the schedule was concerned. I started by calling the place that Timothy attended when he was three. This place would be most ideal because their hours actually extend into the afternoon, albeit only two days a week. Plus we already know about the program since Timothy was there just a couple years ago. But, alas, they are full. We are on the waiting list. The other two schools are two or three mornings a week. I don’t remember all the details about them. It’s moot anyway, since they are full too.
So, we’ve been left to our own devices to be sure he is getting at least a little bit of education. We figure that with two trained educators can figure out a way to stimulate his brain. I’ll admit that the first few weeks of my jobs, he interacted with the television more than us. He watched lots of movies. That has improved a lot. He still goes to the pregnancy center with me about 8 hours a week and I spend a lot of time working from home, but we’ve built in some school time into our schedule as well. It’s not overly formal. Quite honestly, it’s just playing with him that way we should have been doing all along. We read, make things out of empty toilet paper rolls, talk about the different sounds that animals make, …. Basically just follow his lead. He’s loving it!
One thing we have been working on is learning to write his name. He can say the letters correctly, and does pretty well writing the first few letters. He has informed me that it’s very hard to write an R. This morning he made the creation shown on the picture above. Luckily, I’ve been through the writing backwards things with Emily and Timothy, so I know not to be too concerned that his Z and C are backwards. And, we’ll get the A in after the H in time. I thought this was pretty good for a 3 1/2 year old.
Note: To you Kindergarten teachers who may read this - we know that it is better practice not to teach a child their name in all caps. We’ve showed it to him both ways. We still have a year and half to get him to write it “correctly.”
One thing about Mr. Zachary is that he lives to be funny. He is constantly making jokes and just trying to make us laugh (and he generally succeeds). I could devote a whole post to the funny things he says, which I will do at another time. Let me leave you with one though.
“God made me crazy.”
And if you know Zachary, you know he’s right!
