School Decisions

Wednesday, I took the free babysitting opportunity to leave Chase with Grampee and went to sit in on a preschool class in Tate’s new school, just to be doubly sure we made the right decision. After lots of prayer and research, we have decided to send Tate to Rocky Mountain Academy of Evergreen (http://www.rmae.org/). It is a charter school with fairly reasonably sized classes, requires a good number of parent volunteer hours and uses the Core Knowledge curriculum. We are excited and feel like it is a good fit for Tate and our family. The school (both the preschool and elementary programs) keep a nicely structured day, are fairly academic and expect good manners/behavior from the kids (e.g. cleaning up their space after mealtime, hanging up their own coats and working on problem solving).

The class I observed was terrific. Different groups were making a paper mache sun, reading a story and playing with blocks. Then in circle time they reviewed the cool things they started learning the previous school day about the sun and planets. We feel it will be a good move for Tate to be with kids that will continue to the elementary school with him in 2010 – seems far away in one sense, but it is right around the corner!

It is not a Christian school, which was a big draw with his current class, but life outside of school is basically “homschooling”, so Bible/character/faith will be focused on during activities that supplement school curriculum and just everyday life. This is our current plan, but we will take each year as they come and make changes if needed.

There is peace in this decision. Tate’s schooling has been a topic of conversation for about a year now. Homeschool? Public? Private? AHHHH!!! Finally, we visited a few schools and decisions started becoming a bit more clear.