Jared graduated from preschool!

He was SO ready. So glad to be done with preschool. As much as I value this play-based free choice parent participation school with one of the best facilities on the peninsula, this year was a little rough. He had a very small class, only 14 and mostly boys. (As ALL their classes have been for the last 4 years… even at Laurel, Ethan’s public elementary???) In that group of 14 were 2 sets of inseparable best friends. This meant that 1/3 of the class spent all of their time exclusively with each other. I think this contributed to a serious class clown identity complex for several of the other boys, including Jared, as they struggled to fit in and get attention.

Additionally, Jared is advanced academically beyond his peers. He is reading, he can do addition (he’s worried about going to kindergarten because he doesn’t know multiplication and he’s “Not very good at minus!!!”), he understands chess and can execute strategy in tic tac toe (thanks to hours online with Nana!!!). Just as I remember Ethan struggling, Jared would want to play more rules-based disciplined games and have trouble finding playmates at that level. He would play Connect 4 with an adult for hours.

But this was a hard year for him emotionally. He is very sensitive physically and emotionally. I wonder how much this is nature vs nurture, but there’s definitely some nature there. Matthew is the opposite. Matty can scrape himself up so bad he’s bleeding and he’ll get up and keep playing. I think there are some pain receptors that aren’t working properly there. If Jared gets jostld slightly he cries in pain and takes it as a personal insult.

Anyway, the parents and teachers wrote down impressions of the children and this is what his comilation looked like:

Jared Lipka thinks out of the box, is thoughtful, humorous, has good leadership skills, is very agile, has good reading and math skills, is “taking it all in.”