Self-Awareness and Pre-K

This morning as I was doing Jayla's hair, we were watching the same Disney Channel programming that we watch every single morning. And there's this one little filler that they always play before Little Einsteins comes on. A blue monkey and a red monkey (oooh and aaah, for those of you that are familiar with Playhouse Disney) talk about what colors they are and the red monkey talks about other things that are red. I usually ask Jayla to name something else red as well. She always says, "Rocket (from the Little Einsteins) is red". Since we read an Elmo book yesterday about red things, I asked her to give me something else that is red. I was totally thinking that she would say Elmo or apples or a firetruck. Instead, she said, "Ummmmm....Jayla's not red. Jayla is black." Whoa. I totally was not ready for that one. I am slightly curious as to where she has even heard that terminology because, clearly, she is brown so for her to say she is black, I think someone had to tell her that. I do, however, think it is cool that she is so self-aware. And maybe she was ready for a slightly better MLK explanation.

In other news, I talked to her teacher this morning when I dropped her off. I've been thinking for a while that Jayla is probably ready to move on out of the toddler class. She has been in the same classroom for 14 months. She has learned more than any toddler should ever know and now she is one of the oldest kids in the classroom. Her teacher also agreed that she has mastered everything at that level (the most important things being potty training, using writing utensils, and "good" social and verbal skills). Her teacher said that she is ready to enter the pre-K program rather than move up to the second toddler room. So, I talked to the Director on my way out of the school this morning and she says that she doesn't have any room in the pre-K3 classrooms. She says that they will start to shift the students on June 1. So, I'm not in too much of a hurry as long as she is in pre-K by her third birthday in August. If we're still in a toddler room by then, we'll have to be looking elsewhere. In the meantime, I guess we could obviously just wait where we are in her toddler room or we could probably move to the second toddler room where she's with slightly older kids doing slightly different things until a pre-K space opens up. Decisions, decisions...