Thursday, March 22, 2007

georgia pre-k

<--- Little Man has been accepted into a Georgia Pre-K (Pre-kindergarten) program. I had heard that there are sometimes shortages of openings, so on the advice of friends I registered him at three different locations. Some preschool daycare centers have only one day they register students - only handing out exactly the number of applications for which they have openings. They'll only hand you the application packet if you have your child's birth certificate and Social Security card with you (I did, luckily).

Other places hand out as many application packets as they are asked for, and then they do a lottery to fill the spots, just randomly picking out applications. I favor the random picking, because it creates less of a frenzy for the center. The place that had the one-day registration was chaotic, with lines of parents waiting to get the application packet, then parents sitting or standing all over the place filling out the forms, then another line of parents waiting to turn in their paperwork. I can't see how this would not negatively effect the children in the center. I don't think it's very safe to do it that way, either. Of course, it had to be a dismal rainy day too!

Little Man will start pre-kindergarten in August. It will be a 6 and a half hour long day for him.
I think that is too long for preschool. I wish there was a 4-hour option. He'll probably do fine, it's me who will suffer during that long day - he's the light of my life!

Georgia's Pre-K is funded by the Georgia Lottery, so I will only need to pay about $17 a week for food costs. I think he will really enjoy it. Still working a lot on potty training him...sometimes I think we're almost there, and then other times I am afraid he'll go to college wearing Pull-Ups!!! We'll work on it even more this summer, and he should be totally ready by the time PreK starts.

3 comments:

Cindy said...

Wow, do I need to start looking now for pre-schools? Is that how it really is, or is the demand high for your area?

I'm not ready for all this...

DD said...

It's probably more of a problem in Georgia, because our PreK is funded by the state lottery. We also have illegal aliens who are in the programs, so that uses up some spots I think. You should start looking into programs to at least feel your way around on how things work where you are when Alex is about 3 years old...just so you will have the information in advance. A lot of people wait until a month or two before the Pre K programs will actually start, and that can often be too late. Registrations start in February or March, even though the school year starts in August here.

Lisa R Charles said...

That's really great news Darla. Way to go!!

 

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