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The beginning of my experience on the other side of Public Education. You know, the “Mom” side. Our little Monkey is headed to Kindergarten.
We attended our first ‘Meet the Teacher’ on Friday afternoon. His teacher seemed young…but aren’t they all? I think she’s probably a good match up for the Monkey, though. When she saw him in the hallway goofing around with one of his best buddies from pre-school, she grinned and said “So, are you two going to be my trouble-makers this year?”
Monkey grinned and shrugged, “Yep.” His response was so matter of fact and without hesitation it seemed as if he had been planning it for the entire summer.
In the ‘Parent, please do this’ packet I found some Parent Homework. The worksheet is about “ getting to know your child”. We are supposed to complete and return by the end of this week. It is a three to four page work sheet with ‘hypothetical’ and general statements. You are supposed to read the statement and then rank your child as ‘always-sometimes-never’ by circling numbers one through five that correspond with how the child responds. There is also an essay section for you to provide additional details you think are relevant or where specific skills the child exhibits may be a ‘needs help’ with or are ‘behaviors to understand’, etc.
My initial thought was this is great! I have the opportunity to give them information up front. How cool is that? Do I get parent extra-credit or bonus points?! I started to read through it and I want to answer ‘yes’ to each one. Truthfully, it really is always, sometimes AND never in varying degrees on any given day. There is no prescription to how these things go with a five year old. As I continued reading through the general question/statements printed on the inviting soft lavender colored paper I got to thinking.
This is a scam.
Don’t get me wrong, I realize they have a bunch of kids to deal with and having some up front information MIGHT be helpful. BUT…
Call me idealistic. I REALLY want the teacher to take the time to learn about my child by getting to know him. Learning about what works with him, what motivates him and what doesn’t. Certainly he will have to learn about her, as well. What she tolerates, what she doesn’t, etc.
First of all, I don’t think the three page worksheet will cover it for the very same reason I want to answer ‘yes’ to all the questions. He’s pretty clever so I think even if I provided all the “inside” information, I am doubtful that these statements/questions even touch the surface of what he is all about let alone how he might respond. Sometimes even I am surprised at his responses. Last week while talking to him about something I felt required explanation he interrupted me mid sentence with “Yeah, Mom…blah, blah, blah…I get it.”
This response doesn’t get me too upset even though I would prefer he not talk back OR interrupt me, issues we continue to work on. But, I do recognize that I can be verbose at times. I also recognize that, as the parent, I can appear to talk down to him. He grasps things quickly without having to be given infinite examples. In fact sometimes he will have some of his own fun by letting me go on and on and I look up to see him smiling at me with that big ‘gotcha’ grin. Maybe he understands sarcasm a little too well.
He’s an extremely energetic but yet very focused boy. He says the blessing at dinner and enjoys pretending to be a Clone Officer from the Clone Wars running all over the house yelling “Battle stations, Battle Stations!” and making shooting noises from his imaginary laser blaster weapon. He makes sure that he hugs the family dog, Belle, before leaving for the day. He enjoys standing on the fireplace playing air guitar pretending to be a Rock Star and he loves to gently plink the keys on the piano as he composes his own little sonatas. He can be polite, soft-spoken, sensitive and caring. And there are times when he is demanding, temperamental, sarcastic and rude. After receiving his punishment one afternoon for doing whatever it was he wasn’t supposed to be doing, he dropped into his chair with an “humph!”. Brows furrowed, arms crossed in an indignant tone he states “didn’t see THAT coming”. Trust me, neither did I! Out of the mouths of babes…
The real question for me is how do they use this worksheet? Do they even read the responses? What do they do with this information? Do they take this ambiguous information and pre-dispose a child to certain behavior pattern just because that’s the way the parent answered it?
More importantly, does it really matter? He won’t be the same with his new teacher in a classroom of his peers as he is with me and his Dad sitting at home playing Mario Kart on the Wii, taunting his dad with ”ok, big man…bring it! This will be like taking candy from a baby!”
I expect that my child will have good days and bad days. He will be the star student, the class ham and the trouble-maker, often any of them interchangeably on any given day. He’s a five year old boy.
In spite of the possible motive for this parent homework printed on the inviting soft lavender copy paper, there really isn’t any definitive path to getting to understand him except to give him respect, give him boundaries and teach.
Maybe that’s all I have to write on that worksheet …or write nothing at all. It will all be clear soon enough.
Good bye 2008, Hello 2009.
I promised to bring everything up to speed today and catch up on all the pictures and events since the middle of October. This post got so big…I had to break it up into a few shorter posts.
There were a number of things setting up to make things fun for this last quarter of the year.
Let’s start with Halloween! Each year the development we live in puts on a Halloween fun day for the kids. Danny enjoyed playing all of the games. Daddy enjoyed them as well. Here they are getting ready for a sack race.
And they are off!!!
We have a Winner!!!
Daddy attempted to dive across the finish line for a dramatic win. But unfortunately, he was out bounced by the Monkey. Speaking of bouncing, there was plenty of that to be had there as well!
The monkey had a real time deciding which of his favorite Super Heros would be his choice for a costume. But it didn’t take too long before he decided on Bat Man. I believe he thought that we really would get a Bat mobile if that was the one he chose, but ultimately this costume had the best accessories. A cool utility belt with bat-a-rangs and a flash light. Mom also found some cool Halloween jammies!
Mr. Scary Skeletor!!! And…yes, you guessed it!
Bat Man!
Halloween was a pretty fun day. Mom and Dad took off work, Aunt Terri, Uncle David and cousin Sarah drove in from Houston and Daddy played golf…and got his first hole-in-one! It was pretty great! Here’s the costume pics. Seems we have a bit of a “fitting” issue with the mask piece of the costume. Not an exact fit but he wore it the entire evening!
Everything seems like a bit of a blur following Halloween.
A spa/salon not far from my office decided that they would like to carry some of my jewelry pieces on consignment and they were in the process of re-modeling the salon. I needed to have inventory by Thanksgiving to go on display after the remodel that weekend. I had three weeks to get the beads and jewelry made. In addition, my best bud – also designs jewelry and makes beads asked me to participate with her in a Christmas bazaar in December. Oh, why not?
I didn’t realize how much work it was to do all of this…oh and work full time, too. Yikes. Somewhere in the middle of all this fun Monkey graduated to yellow belt in Kung Fu. You were probably wondering what all the posing was about in the PJ’s. He’s been taking Kung Fu since August. He’s a bit of a ham and likes to show off. Kung Fu requires him to have focus and pay strict attention which seems to be a nice balance for him.
Kung Fu seems to be a highlight of his week. He was able to learn what he needed to know in order to pass the test and now he’s a yellow belt.
Little Kung Fu Kid!
Good Job Little Monkey!!!
It seems like every extra minute between Halloween and Thanksgiving was spent either making beads or designing and constructing jewelry. We also spent some time putting together the feast for Thanksgiving. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I took my pieces to the Spa/Salon and to my amazement they accepted all of it! I was excited and somewhat panicked. I was back to square one on the inventory for the Christmas bazaar. Another couple of weeks making beads and jewelry. It went by so fast and to my own amazement, I was able to get it done.
The Christmas Bazaar was also lots of fun. Rose also provided some built in helpers. Her son’s were very helpful getting things in and out of the cars and helping everyone with stuff. We even let them have a break now and then.
It was our first official show. Too cool!!
We didn’t sell a great deal but all in all it was a good experience to participate in. Thank you, Rose!
With all this fun behind us, there was nothing left to be focused on except Christmas. Now, with a four year old waiting on Santa, that can be quite entertaining on it’s own.
It was fun watching Daddy put all the lights up outside. He also put up the tree and did most of that decorating. I finally pitched in getting the rest of the indoor decorations set out and the house was lit and decorated. We finished all the shopping and even found time to send out Christmas cards and make treats for all of our wonderful neighbors!
The monkey has a new buddy across the street. They moved in a couple of weeks before Halloween and it seems that we may as well paint a crosswalk on the street between the houses! These two are inseparable. They love to drive the power wheels Lightning McQueen and play Ninja Turtles. They also get a real kick out of playing on their bikes and watching the Ninja Turtles movie.
Christmas really is fun when you have a four year old. A few days ahead of Christmas Monkey got to visit with his favorite SpiderGirl…my friend Christine. She came over and they made Christmas cookies.
He was also extremely excited to open a gift from her…Hot Wheels. He loved them.
It was a fun morning and somehow…those cookies just disappeared. Santa, I hope you enjoyed them!!!
He was so excited for Christmas and worked very hard to be on Santa’s good list. I went hunting for the obligatory pictures and turns out all we took that day were video. So…I guess that means that the highlights for toys and fun will have to wait a few days as I take the cute pics of the monkey playing with the gifts.
Hope you had a great Christmas! We sure did!!!
A few weeks ago I mentioned that the Monkey was taking swimming lessons. Tonight completed week five and I am completely amazed at the progress! Only one lesson per week and he’s moving steadily through the program. I think the most fun thing about is that he LOVES every single minute.
In the first class everyone starts out as “Puffer Fish”. Little puffy cheeks, holding their breath then blowing bubbles while holding their heads underwater for count of five. Seems easy enough but imagine this with 3 and 4 year olds and their ‘dynamic’ attention span. 
It was giggle fest for the parents watching from the bleachers. Unfortunately you may also remember that I had a slight planning issue and failed to charge the camera batteries. I have no photos of the little Puffer Fishies. Ever have one of those days?
On to lesson number two: floating and gliding. This time we did have the camera WITH batteries charged. I had Daddy take the photos and for some strange reason they are a bit on the blurry side. They are still quite cute! I haven’t taken the camera since week two but I will put it in the swim bag to bring next week to take more pictures.
He’s in the “freestyle” section this week and working on learning the fundamentals of the freestyle stroke. He’s excited about this section because he’s learning to move faster through the water. This seems to be the main focus for him right now. “I am gonna swim faaast, Mommy!”
I think he will be in this section for a couple more weeks. What he really wants is to be moving on to the “racing pool”.
He thinks he’s ready for that gold medal…
