My (newly) 5 year old daughter is one of those kids who missed the September cutoff for Kindergarten, so she had to wait another year before entering. She went to a preschool last year that we all loved very much. Due to the ease of travel for this year, we switched her to another highly rated preschool in our area..... She has a good time there, and seems to learn a lot. Because I work full time, I can only get her from school on Fridays and we have an entourage of people who help out for Mondays and Wednesdays it seems. It all works out fine, and I'm very thankful of that. I'm also very thankful to have a great job, that I (for the most part) enjoy. They are also forgiving and allow me to partake in some events here and there with KT's class as long as I make up my work at home or stay after at work to get things done. Since I'm so busy, I don't get to do this often, but I decided last month that I really should make an appearance. I am off on Fridays, but I have the little Monster with me, and she doesn't make anything easy when it comes to cooperation. I couldn't imagine going on any sort of field trip or doing something in the class without BG tearing the joint down, having a temper tantrum or punching some kid in the face. On Wednesdays, the kids do this activity called "Kidwriting" and they ask for parent volunteers to come in and help with the kids. Because things could change on a dime at work, with BG or another kid at the sitter's, I waited until the night before to tell KT I was coming into her class.... I was even afraid then because the last thing I wanted was to finally try and participate and have to cancel for some reason. Anyway, it worked out that we dropped BG off at the sitter's and boogied over to school.
I hear the "Why do all of the other moms come on field trips/volunteer in school/provide crafts and snacks and you don't?" all of the time, so I felt like I was scoring some points on the Mommy Meter.... I was trying not to think about the ton of stuff I had to do at work later that day.... so for 45 minutes, I was in Pre-K mode.
Here's the thing.... while I love my kids more than anything or anyone in this entire world, I'm not the biggest fan of other kids. They're pretty annoying. Sure, we have close friends and I love all of their kids and care for them as I would my own. However, I'm not one of the bubbly personality types to be overly gaggy towards kids just because they're young and cute. I talk to my kids like I'd talk to other people, with the exception of a couple funny words they say incorrectly that crack me up. Right now, KT's thing is eating "Silver Buds" (Wilbur Buds) and BG likes to play on my PiePad (ipad).... so in our house, we have Silver Buds and PiePads.
We walked in and KT started to talk a mile a minute..... Here's my owl (They have name tags shaped like owls that they hang on the tree to say they're "there." Here's my cubby; you can put your phone there. Here's where I play. This is my friend _____ . (Friend), this is my mommy. On and on and on....
The teacher came over to talk to me and asked if I was here for kidwriting. I thought, "Jesus, I signed up for the wrong day." I said, "yes" and she instructed me as to where I needed to sit and what I needed to do. I sat down in the dollhouse sized furniture (really accommodating for a 6' tall person), and just watched the kids. They were all to sit at the seat with their specific book, draw a picture on top of the page and then choose an activity to play until we were ready to do their "writing." We would call each kid over and write a sentence that described the picture they drew. The teacher does a great job with teaching them certain concepts like "th"sound is a tongue sandwich and words that end with -ing are friends with the King of Ing..... I quickly found out that best way to get them to say the letter U was to say "uhhh uhhhh Uhhhh-nderwear." They all thought it was hysterical. There were also a number of "sight words" on the board with things that were relevant for that time of year.... for instance, they had Halloween, Christmas, tree, etc. Our goal was to get them to write on the paper exactly what they heard when they said the words. It didn't really matter at this point if they spelled things like iz for is (although they did have a specific is trick too which I forget). We would get them to write out the sentence and then we went over it with them to tell them what they did right and where they could fix certain things... Honestly, they about half cared and really wanted to go play this board game that involved flipping frogs into a barrel....
During the explanation of the activity, I also got the old "It's really nice when working mom's take some time to include themselves in the classroom and take an interest into what their kids are doing in school" lecture/statement. I swear sometimes when I pick KT up on Fridays, she purposely asks me who I'm there to get..... to make it seem like I'm never around..... sigh. I just smiled and said, "glad to be here."
By this time, most of the pictures were drawn and kids were all over the room. My kid was screaming as her frogs narrowly missed the bucket.... she was told 3 times to use her indoor voice. Proud moment....as I sat there, looking like a giant on this baby chair.
My first kid was my own.... She drew a Christmas Tree. I asked what her sentence was and she said, "This is my Christmas Tree." I thought, "fantastic, let's write." We start sounding, Th-- Thhh --Thh "TONGUE SANDWICH," she screamed.... I scoffed at her to shut her yapper, but that she was right. We got This is and then she went to "my" and I thought she'd say mi, but got the y right.... It's some kind of tricky why nonsense story, but hey, she remembered and she wrote it.... Then she turned to the wall, "Christmas tree is right there." I said, "How nice of you to have almost half of the words on the board so you don't have to think about sounding them out." She smiled, "DONE!" She was allowed to get her sticker and go back to the frogs.
The next kid came to me with the same picture as KT's. I forget his name, but I said, "What's your sentence, buddy?" He said, "This is my Christmas Tree." Awesome....I got experience with this one..
Th Th Tongue Sand--- TH -- and on we went. I tried to be nice and cheerful with him, but he didn't care about kidwriting. He wanted to go play on the computer. We did our sentence with little conversation and he was on his way.
My 3rd kid was a girl. "What's your sentence?" "This is my rainbow Christmas Tree." For the love of God.... I asked another teacher if they always have the same sentence all morning....they said, "typically no, but since it's before xmas, I guess this is the deal."
Th Th --- Tongue sandwich.... She looks at me, "I can count to 1000." My response, "Awesome, well that's math... this is kid writing, so we'll count to 1000 when y'all do math. Let's figure out how to spell 'this.'" She FRANTICALLY writes a T..... then she writes H in a way I'd never seen it before.... upside down u, and then the straight line.... we get to the end of This -- issss isssss issss eh eh like igloo.... sssss she scribbles IS with a death grip on the pencil. I'm not sure if she's gonna keep writing or stab me... we get to IS.... ehhh ehhh Igloo..... she said IS AGAIN!? "yep." She got My with no difficulty, but then started with the questions, "You're KT's mom?" "Yes, I am." "I never saw you before." "this is my first time here." "You don't pick her up?" "I do on Friday. Rainbow...." I'm thinking "shit, this is gonna take me hours."
She writes a lower case r, but it looked more like a lower case n..... She goes to erase and her pencil has no eraser. I go find her an eraser.... the pencil is skinny and not think like the one without an eraser.... We talk about that for a few minutes. After writing a lower case r 5 times and erasing it, we finally got it on the 6th try. They even have a printout of all of the letters...... She was really a nice kid, but I totally don't have the patience to be a teacher... I found it out that morning. We got Christmas tree thanks to the awesome sight words board.... and she was outta there. A high 5 and a sticker and I was onto the next one.
I was wondering if the teacher picks the kids who go with the moms specifically.... I would.... I'd be shipping off the rainbow tree girl to each mom every week.
Next was the cutest little girl. She sat down and was very petite....her hair and clothes were adorable. I could tell she was pretty smart just from talking to her at first...... Then I looked at her picture...
"What is this picture?"
"I drew Joseph and Mary in the stable with the Lord, Baby Jesus."
I'm thinking about how we can simplify this.... and she said, "You're KT's mom?" "Yep." "You're the one who won't let her go to lunch box club?" (Some Mondays after school, kids can stay with a packed lunch and do activities. We haven't done this yet b/c her sitter gets her on Mondays and she's got a schedule that doesn't mesh with Lunch Box Club. We had discussed this, but just never got around to it). "It's not that she's not allowed to come. I just work kinda far away and her baby sitter picks her up after school at regular time because she's over this way to pick up her son from kindergarten." "Oh, you can't come get her because you work?" "Yea... I know, it's tough..." Then I thought to myself, "why do I feel the need to explain myself to this kid?"
"Let's get your sentence together. OK, how about, 'Here is baby Jesus?'"
Thankfully, she agreed....
She pretty much just wrote out "here is baby" without me doing anything..... I look around at the sight words... CLEARLY Jesus has to be on there. It's a very religious school...... Nope, no Jesus....
OK, Juh Juh Juh" She writes J. EEEEEEZZZZZ EEEZZZZ JEEEZZZZZ.... She wrote Jeezus..
Perfect.
We went over the correct way to spell it, she got her sticker and I was wiped out.
By this time, it's almost 9:45 AM and now I'm starting sweat about the work I need to do at work..... I excuse myself (all of the kids were done).... Gave KT a hug and was outta there....
She really liked that I came to help, and I'm glad I did too....but I was also glad to get back to my hermit geek squad nerd self back at the office with my earphones in my ears and computers at my fingertips.
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