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.