Last week was a big change for us – saying goodbye to my son’s daycare which he has been going to twice a week for the past 2 years to give this mama a regular sanity break and time to do errands, blogging, chores, and freelance work. With Kindergarten coming up in the fall, it was time to say goodbye and focus on our summer adventures.
To celebrate the dude’s last day, we made cards for each of his friends and teachers and some yummy cupcakes to eat at snack time. I picked up some fun sayings about friends at Michaels, put them together with some flower pieces and brads I found on sale and dipped into my huge supply of scrapbooking paper to make cute affordable cards that wouldn’t take too long to make. My son made up his own goodbye message which I printed inside with our contact information.
We made the cupcakes together with a Duncan Hines cake mix (so good!) and made Martha Stewart’s butter cream icing to go with it. I learned a new skill and made swirling icing on top. The dude knocked it out of the park with the sprinkles. My kitchen looked like a bomb went off after but it was so worth it when our daycare teacher told me the kids devoured them and every last one was gone.
To prepare for our goodbye to daycare and transitioning to Kindergarten after the summer, we have been doing a lot of change management style communication with our 4-year-old:
1. We started talking about leaving daycare with him at least 3 months in advance and have been talking about starting kindergarten for even longer
2. We drive by his Kindergarten school from time to time to check it out, attended Welcome to Kindergarten, and played in the t-ball league at the school field in the Spring
3. In the past month, I talked to my son often about how many days were left at daycare and what we would be doing this summer including spending more time with mama, our vacations, and taking some fun summer classes like lego, swimming and bike camp
4. We made a plan in advance for our special goodbye surprises for the last week of daycare including the cupcakes and the cards.
I know my son will miss his friends and daycare – it’s definitely bitter sweet to say goodbye but we have plenty of happy memories to take with us and are looking forward to a summer of fun and staying in touch with a few special friends. And for our first week of summer fun, well we are having some pirate adventures…
