School

Sometimes it is hard for me to keep up with blogs, especially having two. I often have trouble these days deciding between posting here or at the family blog. I wrote about the kids' first day of school on the family blog, because Max and Lauren started together, and Max wasn't exactly great about letting me take pictures. So, if anyone is interested, click here to read about their first day.

Max seems to be really loving school. As many people know, we really agonized about what to do this year. He loved preschool last year and did well, but they recommended we have him do another year of preschool rather than move him into kindergarten, mainly for social reasons. He was still having difficulty waiting his turn to speak and listening and following directions in groups. For someone who was the center of attention for so long, this wasn't that surprising, and he definitely has difficulty waiting patiently for one of us to finish a conversation or talk on the phone when he wants us. However, he has been working to teach himself to read and has a real interest in math and science stuff and I worried that another year of preschool would bore him. We decided to send him to a private kindergarten this year because the ratio there is 13 students to 2 teachers, similar to last year, but the curriculum will be more advanced. Maybe this won't help him survive in the big public school next year, but hopefully it will work out. They do have a pre-first option at the public school, so if he isnt' ready for first grade, we have that option, too. However, he seems to be doing really well. I haven't had a chance to ask the teachers about how he is listening, but he is definitely absorbing like a sponge. The first evening, he called me into his room to show me "how we hold a pencil in my new school" and was holding his pencil perfectly, no more just grasping it. I have been encouraging him to do this off and on for months. He had his first Spanish class on the third day and greeted me with "Hola" and when we got home said "Gracias for picking me up, Mommy" which was both cool about the Spanish and nice to be thanked. :) Today, he was playing a game and I heard him counting in Spanish even though the game was in English. Late last week, after a week of school, he brought home a worksheet. They had been working on the letters in their names. (Well, I assume all the kids were not working on M, A, and X, though A was the letter of the week and M is the letter next week.) His sheet contained Ms, A, Xs and Ts. They were all neatly written. And, his X's looked like X's, not T's. I assume they had him doing both for comparison. This is another thing I have tried to get him to work on, though again, without pushing. I have been trying to get him to make X's that didn't look like Ts. This weekend, he was writing a book about Wall-E and had written the title out - WALL-E. His W, A and Ls were beautiful. His E still looks like it used to, but I was still amazed. This was not on line paper, either. It was just free form. I know this is a little thing, but it just showed me that this is working for him. And most importantly, he really seems to be enjoying it.

I have thought a lot about homeschooling. I did some when Max was not able to go to school, though how much "schooling" does a 3 and 4 YO really need, but I was prepared to do it as long as I needed to, and I have considered, if the school system in our town really doesn't work for him, homeschooling later on, though it would pain me to pay so much in taxes and not utilize the public schools (well, I guess we are doing that now). However, watching him absorb so much so quickly when I was unable to come up with a pleasant way to get those things across all summer makes me question whether I would be able to be effective. I suppose if I took it seriously, I would, or at least I hope I would. I know a lot of unschoolers as compared to homeschoolers would scoff at the idea that knowing the "right" way to hold a pencil or making neat letters even matters, especially at this age, but obviously it mattered to me, or I wouldn't have cared that much. Every time Max signed his name to something, I knew that the X wasn't a T but as his written language expands, it will be helpful to tell the difference. Anyway, it just got me thinking.