Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Gotta love Catholic preschool


As a 3-year-old, Bella is not necessarily forthcoming with all the details of her day in preschool. You would think that a little girl with a sharp memory could identify more than just "snack" from her morning at Notre Dame, but that seems to be all she can recall!

Anyway, tonight I learned that she is indeed getting some religious education mixed in with those snacks and fingerpainting.

Bella was eating dinner tonight (or, more appropriately, she was ripping the soft cheese part out of her grilled cheese sandwich and stacking the crusts in a pile) and she began singing, "God our Father, God our Father, Jesus Son, Jesus Son, Holy holy Spirit, Holy holy Spirit, three in one, three in one," over and over again to herself. It took me a verse or two to catch on to what she was saying, since she'd never sung or even mentioned the song before. But later, she did tell me she learned it at preschool.

I'm really impressed with her school, especially how much she loves going there after just a few short weeks. On Tuesday, she actually instructed Tony to leave -- this from the girl who screamed and cried on her first days!

It is also very comforting to me that she is getting exposure to a religious education. I love that they can actually celebrate Christmas and Easter in her preschool classroom. She won't get that at public school in De Pere, which is where Tony and I plan to enroll her once she hits kindergarten.

We've gone back and forth on the pros and cons of private vs. public education. And it's come down to this -- the De Pere school system is just too good to not take advantage of its free offerings; we'd rather save our kids' tuition money for college than spend it on private school during elementary/middle/high school years.

So while it's really nice that she comes home from school singing songs about the Holy Trinity, I don't expect it will last. I guess once she starts kindergarten, the religious aspect of her education is going to be up to us...

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