Monday Memories—pre-school?

Noticed this advertisement for the OSU run pre-school--"a high-quality early education and care program that prepares 3 and 4 year olds to be ready for kindergarten." Although I did attend kindergarten in Alameda, CA, when I was 5 I'm not sure there were pre-schools.  My early education program prepared me for life—not kindergarten.  It was playing with neighborhood friends Mike, Tommy and Dick, riding tricycles and pulling a wagon around the block, attending church and Sunday School at the Mt. Morris Church of the Brethren on Seminary Avenue, watching how my mom did household tasks, making tents out of blankets and the dining room table, lining up my dolls for “school,” and lunch, visiting my neighbors Ruth and Earl who had no children so I used the box of toys in their living room, shopping with my mom at the A & P,  watching the traffic on Rt. 64 which was in front of our house and pretending to be a truck driver making all the transmission noises and gear shifts, standing on a stool at the kitchen sink to “pretend” to do the dishes, listening to Mom read to my brother and me from “My book house,” a collection of children’s stories from around the world, coloring and trying to stay inside the lines like my big sisters, walking down the street to visit my great-grandmother, watching the older kids—9 or 10—play softball in the street one block over, inspecting the toes and fingers of baby cousins Joyce and Janet,  listening to my Mom tell stories while she French braided my hair, and of course, the best pre-school adventure in the world—travelling to California and back from northern Illinois in a 1939 Ford with my family seeing the prairies, mountains, desert, and interesting people.