Dear Carolyn,
Today you are 4 years and 7 months old. This is the last time I will write to you while you are in preschool – school is out next week, and then in a few short months you’ll be getting on a school bus every morning.
You are so excited for school. But you’re also worried – you don’t want to go to kindergarten until you’re five, no matter how often I try to explain that you only have to be five before December 1st, not before school starts. You apparently got this notion from your Ramona the Pest book, that you have to be five before kindergarten. After your bus ride last week, though, you’re very eager to get to go on the bus every day. (Trust me, kiddo, it wears kind of thin by high school…)
We’re going to have to practice eating lunch this summer. Because you definitely prefer to enjoy your lunch for as long as you possibly can, and that is so not going to work when you only have a half an hour for lunch! I can just picture you getting in line to get your lunch, bringing it back to the table, waiting for it to cool to just the right temperature, and then…the teacher asking everyone to line up to go back to the classroom before you’ve even taken a single bite. I’ll definitely be packing your lunch to try to help with this, but you still are going to need to learn to eat a little faster, and among many distractions.
When I look back at how much you’ve changed since you started preschool almost two years ago, it’s amazing. You went from being very sad to leave me to barely wanting to stop for a kiss before joining circle time. You’ve learned to read, have gone from barely being able to draw a circle to starting to be able to write legibly, you’ve learned how to make fast friends, and how to play together with them instead of just in the same room.
And when I look forward to all that you will experience from now until you graduate from high school…I can’t wait to see your science fair projects, what instruments and sports you choose to try, the essays you write. And underneath it all, I will always remember my precious, precocious little preschooler skipping off to join her friends.
Love, Mommy