The Little Yellow School House

We went to Katelyn’s Pre-K open house today. Nana and Papa went with us so they could see it too.I was so excited to see what her school looked like. Nana and Papa, I think, were just ask excited. Her going to Pre-K is turning in to a family event! The Faulkner School was established in 1897(!) by the Faulkner family. It’s run by a foundation now(I’m guessing the Faulkner foundation or something similar) so parents make a monthly donation in lieu of regular tuition. The school only teaches Pre-k and Kindergarten. If everything works out we’ll probably send Katelyn to Kindergarten there as well. She’ll end up doing two years of Kindergarten. The first year will be like an advanced Pre-K and the second year would be Kindergarten curriculum. It’s a quaint and charming 112 year old building. I fell in love with it. We got to meet Katelyn’s other teacher Miss Debbie, an older woman they call “Nana” who, I”m guessing, is just a helper and we saw Miss Tilley(My mother in law’s friend, Roberta) as well.Katelyn is excited she’ll get to take a back pack and a lunch box to school on the days that she goes. She’ll be there from 11:30 to 2:00. It’s only 2.5 hours but they do structured activities during that time.

The front of the school

The founders.

They have several neat, old photos and plaques hanging in the school dedicated to the Faulkner family.

The classroom where they do their ‘work’ .Where learn to write letters, art projects etc. They also have lunch at their desks. The woman on the right is Roberta/Miss Tilley.

Katelyn was ready to get started!

The main play area. They have half an hour of free play time where they can play with blocks, puzzles etc. They also do their morning circle time in here. Madelyn had a blast playing with the toys on the floor. We actually found that she had taken one of the toys as we were getting in to the car! She was very upset to have to give it back. You can see in the top left of this picture that there is a piano in the corner. That piano is somewhere around 100 years old too! It’s broken but a really neat piece of the past.

There are a couple of other rooms I didn’t take pictures of like, the bathroom(ha!), the computer room and reading room. (These rooms are used mainly for the Kindergarten class but the Pre-K class gets to use the computer room every now and then) To be honest I felt kind of self conscious taking all these pictures and I couldn’t find the other two rooms! I got turned around and was too embarrassed to ask where those rooms were. And this place isn’t even that big!

So, this place definitely gives a new meaning to the term “old school”!

Comments

SimplyMel

One thing I’m not liking about Word Press is the size of the pictures! This size is medium. If I go to large it fills the whole screen! grr. I liked my pictures the size they were on my old blog.
Debra

What a neat school. I’m glad she is excited about going. But how do they get anything done in 2.5 hours! I work at a MDO two days a week for 6 hours each day and I feel like I need an extra day.
mom

Such a quaint school. It looks really neat:) Katelyn looks like she’s ready to go and I think she’s really going to enjoy it. So glad you put these pictures on here.
http://lidandthekids.blogspot.com Lydia

That looks really nice! You can’t tell that it’s as old as it is by the inside. They’ve done a great job of keeping it updated.
So Katelyn will go to pre-k and kinder at this school and then go to kinder again at the public school? That sounds good! Garrett will be doing the pre-k class at our church for 2 years in a row and then he’ll go to kinder. It’s crazy to think that he could technically go to kinder next year since he’ll be 5 and his b’day is 2 days before the cut-off. But there’s no way I would do that to him.
SimplyMel

Debra,
I wondered the same thing! As far as I remember the schedule is this
11:30-12:00 free play
12:00-12:15 Circle time
12:15-12:30- snack time/lunch (depending on what you send your child. That will be Katelyn’s lunch b/c I won’t be feeding her before she leaves)
12:30-1:55- All their work( that time is split up too but I can’t remember exactly what)

I may not written the schedule exactly like it is but it’s something like that. They just don’t spend a ton of time on one thing!

Lydia,

That plan is what I’m thinking for now. She could do two years of kinder there if we wanted her to. Roberta said they work with the kids at the level that they’re at. If by the second year they are really advanced they’ll do harder work with those kindergarteners. It depends on where each kid is at. I’m leaning towards her doing her second year of kinder at the school in our town close to us just so she has a different environment and can start out in the school she’ll most likely be going to. (If we’re still here! I know, I say that every year and yet, here we still are). We live walking distance from the elem, junior high and highschool. They are all in the same area.