Chinese School

So I finally got Scarlett started in a Chinese preschool. Since I wasn't successful in teaching her Mandarin, I'm paying other people to do it. Haha, pathetic me! This was actually a preschool that I had her on the waitlist for before we had Elliot. I had planned to enroll her in a more "formal", but play-based, preschool (as opposed to the preschool that she's in at Wally's daycare) but after we had Elliot, it didn't make sense to have two drop-offs everyday. Also, even though I was skeptical at first, her preschool teacher at Wally's has been really successful in getting her ready for kindergarten. Her preschool at Wally's isn't academically oriented or accredited but her preschool teacher has done a great job in exposing her to art, crafts, "science," and the alphabet (upper and lower case). I'm continually surprised at how much Scarlett has learned in the past year. I still get comments from people about how impressed they are that Scarlett's been able to write her own name.

I had completely forgotten about the Chinese immersion preschool until the beginning of this summer when a few mommy friends were talking about it (two of my mommy friends have their 4 year olds in the school). I realized that it was the same preschool that I had looked into before. So I contacted the school to find out what's new and why I was never contacted about my waitlist status (even though I had forgotten about them). It turned out that the school is expanding and moving to a bigger campus end of this summer, which would allow for a bigger class, including after-school sessions for grade-school kids, and a class for 2 year olds. I definitely signed Elliot up for that, when he turns two. I was pretty much ready to start Scarlett at the Chinese preschool for two days a week but at the last moment, we realized that it would be too expensive for us to do both Chinese preschool and Wally's.

When our daycare fiasco occurred, I thought about moving her to the Chinese preschool completely. But the mess at daycare got sorted out and we thought about how much she would miss her friends at Wally's. Plus, we wouldn't have the 40% sibling discount for Scarlett's "tuition" with both kids at Wally's. So we were reluctant to pull her out. We knew that she was getting quality care and a good preschool curriculum at Wally's so we didn't want to change her routine too much. We did realize that if she did two half-days at Chinese preschool, it would be a bit more "affordable." It would also get her more familiar with the Chinese preschool should something happen at Wally's again and we end up having to pull her out completely. So she started at the Chinese preschool end of September. Since the preschool moved to a bigger campus, three more mommy friends have enrolled their 4 year olds in the school. So it's comforting to know that Scarlett isn't going to a completely new setting. She would at least know a lot of the kids there already. It's playbased but it's complete Chinese immersion with conversational Mandarin. I was a bit apprehensive that she would reject it and resist learning the language. But so far, she's been very open to it. Her favorite CD right now is a Mandarin music CD. Even though she doesn't understand it, she plays it everyday (even I'm sick of it). Hopefully, she would be speaking a few Mandarin phrases / sentences by next summer.