not really about kindergarten

As Glitter will be starting Kindergarten this year, I read the blog post of a well respected homeschooling mom about kindergarten.

It was a beautiful, poetic piece with lots of insights. I found myself nodding along with her on many points. Childhood should not be rushed. Children learn best from from doing real things with caring adults in a child friendly environment.

There were some points where we did things differently, but I felt I understood her point of view.

Then I got to the part about a little boy who was her former student, and I wanted to cry for him. She said that he was a brilliant young child with similarly intelligent parents. She and her friend taught him in preschool and kindergarten. She states with sorrow how he couldn't remember to hang up his coat, didn't play with other children, asked about advanced academic subjects, and had social/emotional skills that were out of balance with his intellectual achievements. Their teaching goals for him were to get him to play and talk with his peers.

My heart ached for this little boy as I read about him. But not, I suspect, for the reasons the blogger implied. I don't think that this boy's parents rushed him through childhood in pursuit of academic achievement, leaving him unable to relate to his peers. I think he was probably profoundly gifted. It is hard for such gifted children to relate to their peers because they don't have true peers. Their age peers are not their mental peers, and their mental peers are not their age peers.

Teaching such a child to hang up his coat and get along with his classmates are important and valuable skills. But I think his innate asynchronousity caused his struggles, not his parents' value of academics.

swimming

Yay, both kids can now swim the length of the pool. When I first put them in swim lessons three years ago, this felt like an impossible goal. All I wanted then was to be able to have two kids in the pool with neither one touching me. Now Wander likes to call the kids his little sea otters.

Many thanks to Wander for paying for swim lessons and for taking them to the pool over and over again.

Teatime Again

We've done BraveWriter teatimes off and on ever since I read about them three years ago when Sparkle was five years old and in kindergarten. Our goal was teatime once a week, but sometime life got in the way. Last spring life got so busy that I even stopped writing teatime on the weekly schedule. However, one unscheduled afternoon this week, the girls spontaneously set aside their play, cleaned everything up, set the table, and told me that we should have teatime. So we did.



Some things haven't changed. Our first teatime started with a broken mug; this teatime began with a broken a vase. Glitter is still a crumb factory, and the tablecloth always needs washing afterwards. The sweet snacks I had planned to phase out are still served. Sparkle still loves the poetry so much that she forgets her treats on her plate as she giggles at one Jack Prelutsky poem after another.

Other things have changed. The girls have taken on the fun of setting and decorating the table. They prefer the green tablecloth to my blue one, and they make outrageous bouquets of silk flowers instead of the fresh ones I used to buy. Glitter has started reading some poems herself, falteringly but definitely reading.



I hope that we will continue to find time for teatime in the school year to come.

Library Magic Show

Oh dear, I'm putting things horribly out of order. This magic show at the library really happened before the show with the bunny and before the children's museum visit, but here it is in the post order.

Here's the poster for the magic show at the library.


Here are Sparkle and Glitter making their entries in their log books at the library.


Here are their log book entries. I helped Glitter with spelling. The sticker in Sparkle's log book is the free "ticket" that the kids need to get into the show, so that the room doesn't exceed fire code.

Dumping photos from my phone

This post is a dump of photos from my phone. (I'm getting better and better about having my phone with me and having the battery charged.)

The girls got these two Barbie dolls that came as a set with girl-sized necklaces. They loved the Barbies and the necklaces that fit together to make a heart.


A while ago (last month?) we got to babysit the neighbor baby. Sparkle loved feeding her.


Wander looks happy in this picture.


Glitter and Sparkle


I love these pictures of Sparkle.


I must have forgotten to post about going blueberry picking.


Sparkle took these pictures of Glitter with her phone and then Bluetooth'ed it over to me. We finally convinced her to stop sending pictures as messages because they costs us too many minutes.

Log Books

In an effort to create a "writing rich" environment for my kids, I got them log books. They are simple black hardback books with blank pages. Each kid colored a faceplate that I glued to the front.

I explained that just as Christopher Columbus kept a log book documenting his voyages and travels, so too they could log their outings and adventures. Glitter immediately took to the idea. Sparkle was a bit slower to warm up to the idea but got on board when she saw Glitter's enthusiasm.

I'm trying to give control over the log books to the kids. I suggest when to put entries in their logs, but don't insist. I do require that they keep their log entries accurate - no writing imaginary adventures that never happened or making up stories (they have other venues for that). I also ask them to include a combination of writing and drawing. Sparkle tends to focus on the drawing and I have to coax her to write. Glitter likes writing and I have to coax her to draw. Unfortunately Glitter's handwriting and spelling are typical for her age - indecipherable even to herself. I asked her to read her entry to me and puzzled out as much as I could and wrote the "translation" in her log.

Here are Sparkle's entries for going to dance class, and a show at the summer reading program at our library.


Here is Glitter's entry for the same library show.

Okay, I allow some leeway in accuracy. There was only one bunny and one snake. But I didn't feel like nit-picking Glitter about that minor detail.

Amusingly enough, the live animals were the only part of the show that left an impression in their minds, even though they were only a fraction of the show. Here's the girls petting the bunny. Yeah, they're lousy photos, but heck, the alternative is no photos at all.



(The previous entry about our trip to the Children's Museum has more scans of their log books.)

I hope that these log books will become treasured possessions when they grow up.

No pictures

I haven't been taking pictures this past month. I just haven't been grabbing the camera. As I load the car and struggle with teaching Glitter how to buckle herself, I think, I'm just going to experience whatever happens, and that will be enough, even without photos to remember it. Because, of course, if I don't have photos or blog about it, I probably will forget that it even happened.

So, today we went to the Children's Museum with some friends. The kids had fun, but, oh my, it was *packed*. I don't think I'll go again until after school starts. We're spoiled by going to places when there aren't many people around. My kids aren't used to having to wait in line and stick close by me in the crowd. They want to see their own things on their own time. But I'm being a bit harsh here. Both girls were actually really good about going at the pace of the group, taking turns, not going places that wouldn't work for the whole group, and accepting that there aren't always enough supplies to go around. I think the crowds scared them into submission.

All in all, a fun, busy day. The kids explored a kid-size city. Glitter's favorite was the grocery store. We saw some science demonstrations, including fog filled soap bubbles and a representation of a clogged artery. We found a room with some fake trees that Glitter also enjoyed. She called it "outside but not really outside." Sparkle found some books in that room to cuddle up with while the younger kids ran around and hid in a hole in a tree. We had a picnic in the back of my car with my trusty loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter. Then we went back to the museum and made ice cream cone sculptures out of paper, markers, and tape.

Plus, the girls prayed for me when driving. It is so sweet to hear them praying for me when there is bad traffic or tough driving conditions. So far their traffic related prayers have always been answered.

After we got home I gave the girls their new log books and they each put in an entry documenting the adventure. Glitter's entry filled three pages with her chicken scratch handwriting describing the different exhibits and activities. I had to beg her to read it to me so I could write a translation next to her writing so that we'll know what she wrote later on. Unfortunately, neither of us could decipher about a quarter of her writing.



Sparkle's log book is in sharp contrast to Glitter's. Sparkle has no trouble with handwriting or spelling, but all she had to say about the whole day was that we "had fun looking and playing." Sparkle devoted most of her log entry to a picture of us lined up, with special attention to getting our relative heights and hair colors right.



Oh, and here's a picture that I took the following day of the ice cream sculptures.


Oh, lookie, lookie, I found this fuzzy picture on my phone from our visit to the Children's Museum. That's Glitter in the green dress and Sparkle in the blue dress. Nope, you can't really tell it's them, but it was too crowded to get a posed shot.