Kindergarten Homework

I knew Brennan would have a little homework in kindergarten, but I figured it would be an occasional worksheet and lots of reading logs.  I did not expect to get bombarded with projects right from the beginning!  Kindergarten is a lot of work for a parent!

First, Brennan brought home the class gingerbread man.  Each child in Brennan's class brings home the gingerbread man for one night, and then the parents document in a class journal what the gingerbread man did while at home with that child.  Since Brennan was the third child in his class to bring it home and he had been sick (thereby postponing his back-to-school celebration dinner), the lucky gingerbread man got to go to the Olive Garden!  Here he is, enjoying chocolate cake with Brennan:

Brennan cracked me up.  He treated that little guy like a real, visiting friend.  He even strapped him in a seatbelt on the way to the restaurant!

You wouldn't think it would be a big deal to write a quick journal entry, but by the time we had the kids in bed and I had packed lunches for the next day and done a few other things, I didn't get the journal entry done until almost 10:00 at night.  Late night for kindergarten homework!

Another project the kids had to do at school was make a shoebox business to go in Wee Willy Winkie's imaginary town.  We were to use alliteration, and it was an easy decision for Brennan to make Brennan's Bookstore.  We were expressly told not to do the project for the child, but to work together, so that is just what we did.

When I saw some of the final projects at the school, I was amused and amazed.  There are some very creative and ambitious parents out there!  Even still, I have no regrets about Brennan's project, as it is a perfect representation of him.  It is precise, detailed, accurate, represents something he loves, he did most of the work, and it makes perfect sense.  It is sooo Brennan.

Notice that three of Brennan's cars have disappeared.  :-(  I don't think he noticed because I brought the project home for him and put the stuff away.

To celebrate the end of their nursery rhyme unit, the whole kindergarten at Nolensville (well over a hundred kids) participated in a nursery rhyme parade.  Brennan was a spider, either from The Itsy Bitsy Spider, which I guess was a nursery rhyme before it was a song (also both Brennan and Cora's favorite song at Cora's age), or the spider from Little Miss Muffet.

Again, the creativity at the parade blew me out of the water!!  Some of the costumes were just amazing!!  We were told to make the costumes using items from around the house (I think the idea was to avoid canned, pre-made costumes), and that made the parade so much fun!  I honestly thought it would be lame, but I enjoyed it tremendously.

Brennan's costume was just black pants and a black shirt and two pairs of girls tights, cut apart and stuffed with poly-fill, then safety pinned to his shirt.  He wore black socks on his hands and feet and we took the waistband from one of the pairs of tights and made a headpiece, which Brennan decorated with paper eyes.  Pretty easy.

There is one more project I created for myself that is kind of silly.  I made Brennan a fun first-day-of-school lunch.  It consisted of tunafish sandwich on fish-shaped bread, "water" (blue jello), "fish food" (strawberries), and goldfish.  He loved it, but I learned an important lesson as a new kindergarten mom:  Teach your child to put the lid back on containers of unfinished food before putting them back in the lunch box!  (Imagine a lunch box full of watery, blue jello!)

I'm sure there are many, many things we will both learn this year!  :-)

Kindergarten!!

We have been anticipating the start of kindergarten for what feels like forever.  Academically, Brennan has been ready for a long time.  Socially, it's right where he should be.

B has been excited about starting at the big school for almost a year, I think.  He is excited that in kindergarten he gets to play on the computer more, he can drink chocolate milk during the day (usually a special dinnertime treat), and he will go on fun field trips.  He has shown no reservations about having a new school.

Last week Brennan had his kindergarten screening.  Our school district does what I call a "slow start."  The kindergarteners get screened one at a time over the course of a few days while the "big kids" (first grade and up) begin regular school.  Brennan's scheduled screening time was last Thursday at 9:30 AM.  I have been preparing him for it for probably six months.  I have told him that he will get asked lots of questions, and the purpose is to find out what he knows so they can find just the right teacher for him.  I told him that if he knows an answer to something he should answer confidently, and if he doesn't, it's okay because they will know what he teacher needs to teach him.  I thought that all of this preparation would be enough.

What I didn't properly prepare Brennan for was the fact that he would have to go answer the questions by himself and that I couldn't go with him.  When the teacher came to get him (forty-five minutes late, so he was very engrossed in play), he freaked out.  He clung to me, crying, and the lady had to pry him off of me.  I basically had to leave the room and walk down the hall so he was left with no choice but to follow the teacher.  It was heart wrenching.

From what I was told, Brennan calmed down and successfully completed his screening, so that is good. However, it left me wondering how he would do on the first day of school.  Would he pull a similar stunt, or would he take to kindergarten like a fish to water, the way I had expected him to all along?

As part of the "slow start" in our district, the kids go in batches for a half day (one batch goes half day on Tuesday, and the other goes for a half day on Wednesday), and then they stay with those same batches of kids to each do a full day on either Thursday or Friday.  Brennan's half day was Wednesday, and his full day is tomorrow.

We walked up to the school yesterday morning, and I wondered which one of us would cry first: Brennan or me.  As it happened, neither one of us did!  He was excited and happy and got to work right away making his fruit loop necklace.  His teacher welcomed him by name before I could even introduce them, and she made him feel like the only child in the room.  When Cora wanted a fruit loop to eat and Brennan told me I needed to ask for permission before taking one, his teacher said, "Brennan, I love you already!"  :-)

As I said, tomorrow is the first full day with a few of his classmates, but Monday is the official first day of school for all kindergarteners in our county.  There will be twenty-one children and their parents all gathered in Brennan's classroom taking pictures and saying goodbye.  It won't be as overwhelming to the kids because they will be in familiar territory with some familiar classmates, but I have to wonder how I will do.  The first day of kindergarten is a much bigger deal than I ever could have imagined.

I am officially now the parent of a school-aged child!

Mother's Day Wisdom

Sunday was a sweet Mother's Day.  I was served breakfast in bed (Brennan's idea and Daddy's effort), I was given a bunch of precious homemade treasures, and I got to go out to dinner with my two favorite little people and adoring husband.  I felt loved.

And I needed to feel loved.

I hurt my back last Thursday, and it has been terrible.  I haven't been myself at all.  I have had to feel all kinds of unpleasant things.  Besides feeling incredible pain, I feel helpless, worthless, and dependent.  Those things are just as uncomfortable for me as sleeping on the floor.

Being hurt makes me really look at myself honestly. Some of what I see is good, and some of it isn't.  Although my desire to serve my family and friends is a good thing, my stubbornness is not always my best trait.  And I'm discovering that my not wanting to ask for help is because I don't always feel secure enough in my relationships to believe that people really want to help me.  Of course, I've been on the other side of things, and I know that when I offer to help people, I mean it.  When I'm the one who needs help, I worry:  Am I asking too much?  Am I being needy?  Am I being selfish? 

Brennan is good at teaching me things.  He tells me when he needs a hug.  He tells me when I have hurt his feelings.  He trusts me to love him unconditionally.  When he asks for a hug, he can be pretty confident that he will get one and it will be given with love.  He doesn't have any baggage that tells him to do everything for himself. 

Kids are so good like that.  I learn a lot from my kids.

In fact, Brennan teaches me all kinds of things I didn't know about myself.  Like almost everything in this list below:

Actually, he got four questions right.  Any guesses on which ones?

A Personal Dictionary

Now that Brennan is a reader, he also wants to be a writer.  The other day he wanted to write a letter to his daddy.  He worked sooo hard on it, but it really frustrated him that he couldn't spell everything right.  He did not like guessing at how words were spelled.

Enter the Writer's Dictionary.

For teachers, this is not a new concept.  But if you aren't a teacher (and don't have a ton of them in your family, like we do), you may not have ever seen this before. 

We took a regular composition notebook, created tabs with cardstock, and made it cute. 

Now, when Brennan wants to know how to spell a word (that can't be sounded out easily and phonetically), we add it to his dictionary.  We started the dictionary with words he uses frequently like "want" and "love" and "friend," but we will constantly be adding to it. 

In teacher terms, these are "high frequency words," but we're also adding personal words or words that Brennan will want to reference more often.  Now the key will be convincing him that we don't have to add every word he can think of.

Yesterday Brennan wrote a letter to one of our sponsored children, Dalton.  He made an elaborate sticker picture and wrote on the back, "Dear Dalton, I am happy to be your new friend and I made this picture for you.  Love, Brennan."

Everything was spelled perfectly, which doesn't really matter when you're four years old and just learning, but Brennan thinks it does.

He was so proud.  And I'm excited to see him learn to be a great speller and confident writer!

Little Chatterbox

I probably should have some idea how many words Cora uses, since she is only 15 months old.  But when I took her to her 15-month checkup at the beginning of the month and the nurse asked me how many words she used, I had absolutely no idea.  She said, "Do you think it's less than 5?  5 to 10?  More than 10?"  I said, "Oh, I'm sure it's more than ten."  Then, when the doctor came in, he said, "So, tell me about her verbal skills.  What kinds of words is she saying these days?"  And I drew a complete blank.  I could only think of three or four.  I knew there were more, but I just wasn't prepared for the question.

I decided to make a list of words she used that were clearly intentional and had meaning for her.  And here is what I came up with:

no
up
hi
hiyou
brennan ("meh-meh")
banana
uh-huh
mama
dada
hereyougo
book
help (sounds just like "up")
please or this?? ("ees?")
uh-oh
whereareyou? ("ahyou?)"
baby
mm hmm
yuck
ball
meow
woof woof
baa
look
more
down
hello
milk
go
boo
boom

Yeah, I'd say that's more than ten.  What a little show off.  What a clueless mommy.  :-)  Can you tell she's not my first child?