Why having triplets in the same preschool classroom would make life a little bit easier
Birthday invites
We decided to have the girls' birthday party offsite this year. Weather in April is too unpredictable around here. It could be snowing. It could be sunny and 70 degrees. You just never know and now that they have school friends, I can't imagine packing 25 kids and their parents into our house. Plus, I would rather not have to deal with the cleaning before and the cleaning after.
Most schools have a little rule (whether it is written or not) that you shouldn't hand out party invitations through the school unless you are inviting everyone in the class and I think that this is a fair rule for younger kids. So if I had one kid (or all three of my kids in one classroom), I could write out 13 invitations and pack them in my kid's backpack along with a note asking the teacher to put one in each classmate's bag.
The party place allows for 25 kids plus the birthday kid. We have 3 birthday kids but the party place doesn't care because we are really only paying for one party. So now we are left with 23 open spots. We can go over the 25 kids (although I'm not sure by how much) but we have to pay extra for each kid over. Not a big deal but I'm sure that for safety reasons, they do not allow 40 kids in there.
Between the girls' cousins and family friends, there are six kids. That leaves our open slots for school friends at 17. Anna's friend R automatically gets one of those slots. We are down to 16.
The girls have an average of 13 classmates each. You don't need to be a math genius to calculate that 13 times 3 is 39. Unfortunately, I'm not inviting 39 additional children.
The girls are still in that "boys are yucky" phase (except that Allie claims to have a boyfriend) so I automatically cut them all from the list. See ya in 12 years, boys! There are about 20 girls between the 3 classrooms and I'm assuming that there will be some kids who can't attend. Because I'm not inviting everyone in their class, I am going to have to mail the invitations to each kid's house. And instead of writing those out, I'm sitting here typing this.
I am leaning more towards enrolling them in the same kindergarten class. Do you realize that I have to deal with three school birthday parties all on the same day?
Why having triplets in the same preschool classroom would not make life a little bit easier
Head lice
We experienced our first lice incident last week. Allie arrived home with a sticker and told Grammy that she got it when the nurse-teacher checked her hair. Grammy asked why the nurse-teacher had checked her hair and Allie response was, "To see if it was healthy." At least they didn't scare the kids.
There was a note in her backpack stating that lice had been found in the classroom, yada, yada, yada. Allie checked out okay. Anna didn't have a note or a sticker (Em had stayed home sick that day) so it must have been an isolated incident.
I didn't freak out too much because I do have three girls with long hair in school. I'm not oblivious to the fact that lice happens. The clean up process would have been time consuming and frustrating. And I'm sure I would have been scratching my head.
It was a little bit ironic though because that very morning Allie had asked for some hugs while I was attempting to make myself presentable for work. I still had my bathrobe on and Allie told me that it made her head itchy. The thought of lice had popped into my head but she hadn't been scratching her head at all before that.
I asked Allie who had had their hair checked by the nurse. I was curious to see if they checked the boys' hair as well. Allie responded with, "Only two of us could go at a time because Ms. D only has two hands." I laughed and laughed.
And now that I have typed this all out, I realize that it probably doesn't matter if they are in the same classroom or not because if one of them picked it up at school, I'm sure it would spread to the others fairly quickly at home. Although having them in separate classrooms reduces the exposure if only one classroom has an incident.
And so I continue to weigh the benefits against the negatives of having the girls in separate classrooms.....
5 comments:
Definitely something to think about when I put my twins in school. All 3 of my girls have birthdays in June - 10th and 16th. We have only done one family party so far and now that my oldest is in school, she's going to get a kid party. That's going to be crazy with 2 parties for 3 girls. When the little ones are in school, forget about it. How do you decide who to invite? I know from my oldest that all the kids talk and the birthday kid always "invites the class" even when she is expressly told not to. My daughter, who didn't have a kid party last year, invited everyone to a party at McDonalds. Huh?
As for the lice - ugh! I remember being a kid and the lice notice was sent around. There were 4 of us and I remember sitting at our kitchen table, getting checked by my parents and oh, the horror when lice was found. 4 kids with head treatments and combing and washing all the clothes, coats, bedding, etc. My poor parents. So not looking forward to those days. May we all be spared the lice!
Well I can say this much...I have been a teacher for 10 years, and a kindergarten teacher for 7 years. I have 2 year old triplets myself, so I can competently speak about this from both perspectives. I'll say this- If it were me and I had my choice about it, I would put all three of mine in the same classroom for kindergarten and THEN maybe separate them in the years that follow. But there are SO many reasons it would be easier for you to have them all together... birthdays, class plays, homework, snack policies (ie some teachers have you bring your own snack daily while other teachers ask for bulk snacks and then serve all kids the same snack each day so that could be a pain to juggle), etc. etc. And socially speaking, though we often worry that our multiples will only play with each other and fail to make other friends, all the sets of twins I've ever had in class pretty much avoid each other anyway! So anyhoo, those are just my first impression opinions. I have lots more. :) If you have other kindergarten/triplet questions, feel free to email me. kaoami@aol.com
Good luck with the birthday party! :)
Ami
My experience with Elementary and Preschool Birthday parties was that we would invite the whole class (23-25) and if we were lucky about 8 kids would show up. Don't be surprised when people do not have the courtesy of RSVP'ing.
A side question for you if I may? I was looking at the Sony a230 DSLR as a starter setup for myself from a point and click. It is $349 at Walmart. What is your opinion?
Not that you asked (heh) but we're keeping M&L together at least through Kindergarten. Their pre-k also has the 'all kids need to be invited' rule. They also only have one class room for the 3-4.5yos so keeping them together is our only choice! I know for them, separation will be difficult so I don't want to do it until we HAVE to.
Ami - thank you - it was good to hear your opinion.
Tracey - I don't know much about Sony cameras. I know that they are good so I don't think you'll have a problem. Let me know what you decide.
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