Who needs preschool?

This is Aaron climbing into his friend Grant's playhouse on Memorial Day. He tried to insist at first that he couldn't do it on his own, but he seemed to manage OK when we refused to help him. There isn't a step on that side and it's about 18"-24" off the ground. He can climb onto our dining room chairs, though, so I knew he could do it.

I had been contemplating putting Aaron in preschool around the time the new baby comes. He enjoys social interaction with other kids and I thought it might ease the transition. But one day it hit me - we can't afford preschool AND a nanny to watch the new baby. Paying the sitter more to watch both kids will be substantially less expensive than even part-time preschool plus a nanny for one child.

If my company takes off and he seems more in need of a structured environment, maybe we'll revisit the issue. I don't think he needs to go to preschool - it was just a child care alternative for him, one that would expose him to more kids. Thom didn't even go to Kindergarten and he turned out OK.

Besides, Aaron already knows all his uppercase letters, some of his lowercase letters, he can count to 13, recognize the digits 0-9, knows maybe 2 dozen words by sight, and since we bought him a puzzle of the United States 10 days ago, he has learned where about 1/2 the states go on the map. He's learned all this through play. He showed an interest in letters and numbers and so we "taught" him as we looked at books and played with magnetic lettters and numbers. And after watching him memorize random plants in the seed catalogue, we figured he'd be pretty good with a map of the US. But we didn't set out to teach him these things - it was just a natural part of his play. He seems to enjoy learning. So I think he'll be ready for Kindergarten even if he never attends preschool.

I am hoping to find ways for Kim to get him involved in more group activities, though. Since he likes kids, I think he'd benefit from more social interaction. He does go to a sing-along and to story time at the book store, but I might see if there are more structured group activities in our local community that she can do with him where he can interact more with other children.