Tag Archives: school

Adventure playground

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It’s a tradition at Benjamin’s school that every year, each class takes a trip together.  In the older grades, the trips vary from a weekend spent camping to a week skiing in the Swiss Alps, but for the younger classes, a day-long field trip is typical.  Last spring, B’s class took their trip to an “adventure playground” called Robinsoninsel (Robinson Island).  I had no idea what to expect from an “adventure playground”, but B’s teacher had talked several times about how much she was looking forward to it, so I imagined it was going to be a pretty fun day.

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As one of the parents who had volunteered in B’s class throughout the year (and, possibly, as the first to volunteer), I got to join them on their adventure playground trip.  I, too, was pretty excited when the big day arrived.  A whole day to play outside with my kid and his friends?  And it counts as school?  Sounds great!  Once we got there (after a tense moment when I almost missed the bus stop with my assigned group of first graders), I started to understand the excitement.  This was a really cool place.  It covered most of a city block and looked like the kind of “playground” a child would design of you let them — there were rope ladders, trees to climb, swings, hammocks, tree forts, rabbits, ducks, a pond with tadpoles, and a “smurf house”, made of living trees.

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As always, one of my favorite things about being able to join in on these outings is that I get to spend the day with B.  But also, as I had been in the classroom every week and gotten to know each of his classmates as well, it was great fun to watch each of them explore their new environment in their own way.  There were actual goals to accomplish, like looking at bugs under microscopes and learning about different types of animal habitats, but most of the day was spent in a less structured type of learning — climbing, balancing, running, jumping, getting dirty and discovering on their own.

Though the day was gray and drizzly at times, we had a fantastic time (and, on the plus side, no one had to worry about sunscreen, including me).  It was a wonderful opportunity for a group of city kids to learn and play outside for the day, and I felt honored to be able to join them.

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The lost backpack

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Getting the kids to and from school every day is controlled chaos.  We commute on the always crowded rush-hour trains and buses.  Last year, in the mornings, Dan would take both boys in, dropping B at his school first and then taking Liam to his school, 2 U-Bahn stops away.  Then, at noon, I would go to get L from his preschool, rush home for a quick lunch (and, some days, a short nap for L), and then go back to B’s school to pick him up with L in tow.  (We’ve changed things up a bit for this school year, but the basic principles are the same.)  By the end of the day, we’re all tired.  L is either desperately in need of a nap that he’s not going to get, or groggy from just having woken up from a too-short nap.  B is tired from a long day at school and sometimes PE or after school sports.  And I’m worn out from managing it all.  Our trip home can be relaxed, peaceful and comfortable, or it can be stressful, crowded and grouchy — it depends on the circumstances and on our own states of mind.  Such is the reality of traveling to two different schools each day via public transportation.

I try to not be the packhorse mom, laden down with bags, books, paper, sweatshirts, art projects, toys, gym clothes to be washed, and coats, for several reasons.  It makes me grouchy.  I’m already tired.  I don’t feel like it’s safe when my hands are over-occupied with STUFF when they should be free-ish to help the kids on and off the train, up stairs, onto an escalator, or through a crowd.  And, I feel that teaching the boys to be responsible for their own things shows them what a pain it is to drag around extra stuff and hopefully makes them more aware of the consequences of their own choices (and less likely to think that it’s absolutely necessary to drag every Beanie Boo on every outing).  That being said, last year B was carrying at least two bags home every day, and the choice was not his — it was school-mandated.  So, I would typically carry my purse and one of B’s bags, while B was responsible for his second bag, and they were each in charge of anything else they might have brought along.

But even with our routines, and our attempts to not be overburdened, it doesn’t take much to unravel the whole thing.

One day last April, we were headed home, as usual, and had gotten to the last leg of our trip before the last 2 block walk home — the bus.  L had recently been in the habit of collecting coins, and he saw a very cool Russian one on the floor of the bus, after we were already on and seated.  Since we were already underway, and I’m not in the habit of letting the kids run around a moving bus, I told him that if it was still there when we were getting out, he could pick it up.  He was very focused on it, and every time the bus so much as slowed down, he was poised to leap out of his seat and grab it.

My mind was on L and the coin, and preventing him from hurting or endangering himself trying to get it.

We finally arrived at our stop, the last one on the line, and L enthusiastically leapt down and retrieved his coin.  Yay!!!  We all got off the bus and made our way through a crowded flea market on our block.  We got home, went upstairs and inside, and then realized we were without B’s backpack.

The buses from our stop run every 5 minutes, so, in the hope that we would be fast enough, we threw our shoes on again, ran out onto the landing, realized the elevator was in use, rushed down five flights of stairs, dashed back downstairs, through the courtyard and the flea market and back to the bus stop, where a bus was waiting.  Though I was fairly certain, just by looking, that it was not our bus, we climbed aboard and checked anyway.

It was not our bus.  Our bus, and the backpack, were gone.  We were too late.

B, already panicky about having lost his backpack, was crushed.

We fought our way out again against the flow of embarking passengers.  And then, at a loss for what else we could do, we sat on the step of the bakery near the bus stop and waited.

From having lost many previous items on public transportation (the unseen cost of commuting with kids by train, rather than by car, is the insane number of times hats and gloves must be replaced), we knew that theoretically the backpack would be found and turned in to the transit authority’s central lost and found.  We also knew that despite the fact that Austrians are generally conscientious about getting things back to their owners (hanging up lost gloves and hats on the nearest fencepost is nearly a religion here) we had never before recovered anything that had been lost on public transportation.

The buses on that line run on a relatively short, 20 minute (ish) route through the center of the city.  So, I figured that shortly, the bus (if not the backpack) would be back.

We waited.  When the next bus pulled up, we hopped aboard behind the departing passengers to look for the backpack.  The interior of the bus was the wrong color.  Not it.

We waited some more.  The next bus pulled up, and we hopped aboard.  The driver scolded us for getting onto a bus that was not the next set to depart (the previous bus was still also waiting at the stop), and it was still not our bus.  We were getting discouraged.

The next bus pulled up and we hopped aboard.  Aha!  It was the right color inside!  And it had the same “One Direction” graffiti we’d had on our bus!  It was our bus!  But alas, when we climbed back to our seat, there was no bag.  The driver, confused at our excitement and enthusiasm, watched us as we walked up to the front.  “Bitte, hast du eine rucksack gefunden?”, Benjamin asked.

And, he had.  With a quick but kind reminder that we might not be as lucky next time, he happily lifted the bag over his little divider and presented it to B.

Everything inside was accounted for, and we happily headed home, grateful for the kindness of strangers, and for the Austrian tendency to help lost items get back to their owners.

Student-led conference

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Though I’ve parented on two continents, I’ve only parented school-aged children on one, and so I don’t have much perspective on whether the things I see here which are different from my experience are different because I’m in another country, or just because times have changed.  (I get the feeling that it’s a little of both.)  I get the sense that some things, like less time spent sitting formally in rows at desks, are more of a universal change and that some other things, like having two recesses each day, are more unique to the schools that my boys go to.  And, they are currently at two different schools in two different school systems, so things are certainly not uniform even between their experiences.

Last fall, we had a fairly typical “back to school night” at B’s new school (though it wasn’t called that) which was comforting because it was something I expected and wanted from the school and from B’s teacher.  The school was new to all of us, and I desperately wanted to find out as much as I could about the philosophies and practices of both the school and B’s teacher.

Then, shortly after the beginning of the school year, we had a parent/teacher conference with B’s teacher.  And though I found the concept of a parent/teacher conference familiar, I found the timing strange — the kids had been in school only a month when we met for this conference, so I wondered exactly what we’d be talking about.  As it turns out, it was less a “report card” on how B was doing (although there was a little bit of that) and more of an interactive, let’s talk about how things are going and how we want them to go, let’s check up on if we’re on the same page in terms of his strengths and weaknesses, let’s talk about what we’re going to focus on, and let’s talk about how we can each support each other in these goals, meeting.  And though it wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I went into it, it was actually great.  I got a lot of peace of mind from seeing how well B’s teacher “got” him, and by having her help in sharing some ideas about how we could help him do even better.  That meeting was the beginning of me really trusting B’s teacher to guide him through his learning for the year, and I was able to finally relax about the whole thing because I understood exactly what was expected of him, and of us.  It was great.

Oddly, though, it was the only parent/teacher conference we had all year.  I expected that there would be more, as the year went along, so we could check up on his progress, but that’s not how they do things.

Instead, later on in the year (about 3/4 of the way through) the teachers and students put on a different kind of conference — a “student-led” conference.  From this, I really had no idea what to expect, except that we vaguely understood that B would be leading the whole thing.

And that’s exactly what happened.  It was a chance for the kids to walk their parents through some of their own work.  There were 3 or 4 different stations around the room, and B took us from one to the next, demonstrating what he’d learned in different areas — writing, math(s), science.  And then, B took us around the school, to the gym and then to the music room, to show us what he’d been working on there.

And if I hadn’t been there to experience it, I’m not sure I would have grasped how absolutely BRILLIANT this was.

Of course, as his mom, I think B is clever and talented and brilliant and I love to hear him tell me about what he does at school (though that almost never happens — “What did you do at school today?”  “I don’t remember”).  And, as his mom, of course I loved hearing about his work.  And, I know that he loved having a few hours of our undivided attention.

But, more than that, there was an amazing amount of skill and learning demonstrated during the conference.  First, the kids were responsible for guiding their parents through the process (which is a big responsibility for a 6 year old, but B had a very supportive audience) which meant they had to have been paying decent attention when the teachers taught them how to do this whole thing.  (I imagine they practiced beforehand, too.)  B was in charge.  It was his job to explain how to do the whole thing and to make sure we did it relatively correctly.

In addition to that, he was basically giving a series of oral presentations/demonstrations, but again, to a very receptive audience.  There was nothing slick or overly polished about the presentations, it was very conversational.  But still, he had the responsibility to “present” each station to us, which he did, very comfortably.

And THEN (and this is the coolest part), he had to understand what he had learned well enough to explain it to us!  And that is HUGE.  Because anyone who has ever taught anyone anything will tell you that THAT is how you know they’ve really learned it.  If you understand something well enough to teach it to someone else, you have a truly useful level of knowledge.  I imagine tha the things he “showed” us during his presentation are concepts and skills that he will hold onto for a long time, because going through this process pretty well ensures that they’re stuck in his brain.

So though B thought he was just having us to his class to show us his work (which he was, and he did), he was really doing so much more.  He was leading, he was presenting, and he was teaching.  I know he thought it was pretty cool that we got to come to his class, and he got to tell us where to go and what to do, but I think what we got from him was way cooler.

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Lanternfest . . . or not

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515I’ve often said that of all the new traditions we’ve discovered in Vienna, Lanternfest is my favorite.  I love watching the kids with their homemade lanterns out in the autumn evening, I love their songs, I love the story of St. Martin and the moral of charity and kindness.  I’m a fan.  Benjamin got to do Lanternfest all 3 years he was in preschool, and last year the boys got to do it together (which I particularly loved).

Because it happens in the dark, it can be tough to see — especially for the kids, who are holding lanterns, it’s hard for them to pick out the faces of their parents beyond the glow of their own lanterns.  So, even though the school practices for a few weeks leading up to it (but only in the daytime), there are always a few of the little ones who dissolve into tears once the parade and singing start.

518It happened to Benjamin his first year — he got freaked out by not being able to find us in the dark.  One of his teachers brought him to us (because, in the dark, it was equally impossible for us to tell that he was the one who was upset) and he was able to finish up the performance, just holding my hand.  After that first year, he was fine.

With Liam, we were lucky, since he had the advantage of having seen the whole thing several times by the time it was his turn to do it.  He was finally getting his wish and was up there with the “big kids”, so he was more excited than worried!  Besides, Benjamin was participating too, so he wasn’t there alone (not that any of them is there alone — there are 60+ kids at the school, plus teachers and parents, but a lot of the kids still experience it as being “alone”).  He did great last year.

527So this year, our collective fourth Lanternfest, and Liam’s second as a participant, we expected smooth sailing.  B was a little sad to not be involved, so we dug out his old lantern from last year and he brought that along to hold while he watched.  We took Liam to his class, dropped him off with his teacher and went to find a good spot to watch the show.

Liam didn’t make it to the show, though.  For reasons I don’t entirely understand, Liam freaked out before it was even time for the kids to line up.  He was so upset that his teachers simply brought him out to us, where we were waiting in the dark.  He was too freaked out to participate.  Last year, we dropped Benjamin off first, so he was unfazed by us dropping him at his class.  This year, I guess the thought of us leaving him inside while we all went out just worried or upset him.  I offered to walk with him, or to stand by him.  I tried (repeatedly) to convince him to rejoin his class.  I reminded him of how much he’d been 551looking forward to it and how much he’d enjoyed it the year before.  He declined.  I was surprised, but he was firm.  So, rather than walking and singing with his lantern, Liam stood with us and watched.

For the second part, where the kids and parents go on a stroll around the block, he was happy to join in.  We all took a walk together and shared a kipferl (kind of a hard croissant) at the end, as is traditional.  Liam was clingy, but happy.  Benjamin was wistful, but also happy.  It was another good Lanternfest, and I’ve officially decided to quit thinking that I have any idea of how these things are going to go from one year to the next.

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Action

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There are 10 principles of learning at B’s school, attributes said to be sought after and valued in the International Baccalaureate program.  When the kids demonstrate one of these attributes during their school day, B’s teacher gives out armbands.  B had gotten armbands for being a risk-taker (for trying something at lunch that he’d never had before), for being caring (for looking after a classmate who was having a rough day), for being a thinker (for making connections between a lesson in class and his life at home) and many other things.  It’s a great bit of positive reinforcement, and I’m impressed at how well these paper bands motivate the kids.  B is so proud when he brings one home, and I’ve seen the kids clamoring to get credit for one when I go into B’s class.  To B, at least, the most coveted of all the bands is the “action” band, awarded for demonstrating learning at home, specifically learning related to the unit of study.  The kids can get an “action” band for bringing in a book related to a subject of study, for doing an art project related to what they’re learning at school, or bringing in a related item that they found at home.  (It’s basically an “extra credit” assignment, and it’s very open ended.)

002Back in October, B had been very envious of the “action” bands the other kids had gotten and so he decided, entirely on his own, to make a glitter-glue drawing of the circulatory and respiratory systems, because that’s what they’d been studying in class.  The first few days after he’d decided, he forgot to actually do it, but he eventually sat down with his glitter glue and paper and made a lovely picture of the heart, lungs, veins and arteries.  He was so proud, and I knew his teacher was going to like it.  I was so proud of him.  He had conceived of and executed the entire thing on his own.  It was a perfect choice of an activity to get an “action” band.

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He had his heart set on taking it to school the next morning.  After he’d gone to bed, I checked on it, and it was still quite wet, so, wanting to help him out, I moved his artwork to another spot, close to the fan, hoping to help it dry by morning.  And, in so doing, I smeared the whole thing.  I was horrified.  I tried to fix it with a toothpick, attempting to push the globs of pink, gold, red and blue glitter back to their original spots, but it was no use.  It was ruined.  I cried.

When B got up the next morning, I explained it to him, and he was disappointed, but surprisingly understanding.  I felt terrible.  I suggested that he could take it in anyway, 037and explain to his teacher what had happened, or that I could go in with him and explain it, but he didn’t want to.  He wanted it to be right.  So, instead, he came home that day and started over.  He took just as much time and care making it for the second time.  And I left it completely alone while it dried.

He took it to school the day after, and got an action band for his work.  He was absolutely proud of it, and I was profoundly impressed by his work and determination … and by his ability to forgive my well-intentioned mistake.

Celebrating at school

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029Though it can be a bit hard to tell now (most days he hovers between being vaguely lukewarm and basically unenthusiastic about going to school), there were a lot of things Liam really looked forward to about starting school and getting to be just like Benjamin — field trips, Lanternenfest, playing in the garden.  But none was so eagerly anticipated as celebrating his birthday at school (and yes, I’m still writing about stuff that happened back in September — I’ll catch up eventually).

Last year, which was his first year at school, he had a great time at his school birthday party, but having a September birthday, and being one of the first to celebrate, I think it was a bit overwhelming for him.  I think he was a little uncomfortable with having the attention of his entire class focused on him.  This year, though, he was ready.  He knew it was coming, and he was really looking forward to it.

031The way things work at the school (with parent involvement being limited to a few particular events each year), I don’t get to be there.  (Since not every parent would be able to come to celebrate their child’s birthday, no parents are allowed to come.  “It wouldn’t be fair.”  Which is a bummer for me — getting to help out at the boys’ schools was one of the parts of being a stay at home mom that I most looked forward to).  But, based on his stories, and on the pictures, he really enjoyed himself.  He got to blow out the candles, have cake, be sung to by his whole class, and open up a few gifts.  One, a stuffed dolphin, was a gift from his teachers, while a few others, containing puzzles, were from us and destined to remain at school, rather than come home with him.  (So he didn’t get to KEEP those, just OPEN them, which he wasn’t 100% on board with.)

643Generally, though he was so happy.  He was so excited that morning that it was his big day to celebrate at school, and he was so pleased when I picked him up.  As with the key chain his teacher made for him last year, he absolutely treasures his new dolphin.  He spent days afterwards cuddling with it and singing to it.  He was a very happy birthday boy, and he loved getting to celebrate at school.  Nothing really says, “I’m so big” like celebrating a birthday at school.  My little guy is getting to be so grown up.

Teaching My Monster to Read

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We’ve read to the boys since they were tiny, since before they had any idea what we were doing, back when we felt silly to be doing it — we did it anyway.  Story time has been a part of our evening routine since before the boys could walk.  They love it, they look forward to it.  “Brush your teeth or we won’t have story time” has been an incredibly effective evening motivator.  But though they love to be read TO, and both boys have memorized, and love to recite, parts or all of some favorite books, we’d made almost no progress in getting them to actually read themselves.  B could read his name, Liam’s name, “red”, and “toy” before school started this year.  That was it.

I was a little worried.  I know he’s only 6, and he’s been spending a lot of his mental energy over the past few years learning a new language (and probably teaching himself differential equations in his sleep), but still, I felt like maybe he ought to really be reading.  After all, reading IS fundamental.  All of the kids of my friends at home have learned to read in kindergarten (or earlier), and they don’t really do that here (the focus was on correct speech, rather than reading, which helped immensely with his conversational German, but not so much with reading English) so I was a bit concerned.  Plus, I had no idea how to get it to happen.

When B started school this year, among many other things, I was worried he’d be the only kid in his class not reading.  I shouldn’t have been.  Very nearly half the class had a similar reading level to B, so he was certainly not the only non-reader.  (Of course, there are also kids in his class who could read and write in more than one language — in more than one ALPHABET — so there was quite a spread of skill levels.)

Early on in the school year, we weren’t making much progress, and I was strongly resisting my urge to push, knowing that me adding pressure to the situation wasn’t going to help.  I attended a morning training seminar at B’s school, geared at helping parents help their kids with reading . . . which did help a lot, and which strongly reinforced the fact that I shouldn’t be pressuring him.  Around the same time, B came home with a website recommendation from his teacher.  They’d been using “Teach Your Monster to Read” at school, and apparently, B loved it.

Over that weekend, we got B set up with it on the computer, and the results were amazing.  Not only was he able to run the game almost entirely on his own, but he was READING.  It started off with associating letters and sounds in a variety of short games where B could collect items to decorate his “monster” with whom he was playing the game.  Over the course of the next few weeks, he moved through the levels and had a whole set of letter/sound combinations that he knew well.  The game then began connecting the sounds into short words, and before I knew it, he was really reading and sounding out short sentences.  Seriously, watching him actually read something on his own has to be one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.  (The website is free.  I totally recommend it.)

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We’re 3+ months into the school year, and B’s progress has been AMAZING.  He’s moved on to reading longer stories, to conquering more complex words, adding new punctuation and concepts (contractions have been a challenge).  He finished the monster game a good while ago, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it was a useful tool for him (and remarkable for me because it was the first time I really witnessed him reading), but I also know that the real magic came from the work that he and his teacher put in together.  It’s been an amazing transformation, and I can’t believe it was only 3 months ago that I was fretting about whether or not he could read.  He’s reading real books now. It is just the most amazing thing to see.  He’s still working very hard, and learning more all the time, but he is definitely reading!

Suddenly a soccer mom

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I always swore that we wouldn’t get sucked into it.  I really thought that we wouldn’t end up revolving our lives around a massive list of sports and after school activities for the kids.  I’ve always believed that kids (well, at least my kids, at least) really need, and benefit from, unplanned, unstructured, downtime for them to unwind, rest, or play creatively, so we’ve always tried to make that a priority.  Benjamin had a daily nap until he was almost 6, too, and it was great for him.  I expected Liam to most likely do the same.

743But now, suddenly, I’m a “soccer mom”.  B is enrolled in three different after school activities, plus swimming lessons on Saturdays.  Each day’s plans for the whole family are worked around these activities, including meals, naps (or lack thereof) for Liam, and even Dan’s work schedule.  Regular followers of this blog might have noticed an unusually long hiatus over the past 4 weeks — we haven’t been sick, I’ve just been too busy to write at all.  (My post from late September for Liam’s birthday was written back before his birthday … but it took me a week to get it posted, and this is the first one I’ve written since then.)

Our days are a whirlwind.  Every moment from the time my alarm goes off until the boys are in bed is specifically planned.  Each minute has a purpose, and our schedule has very little flexibility.  If not for my bus and train trips, and the luxury of (sometimes) joining the family for meals, most days I would not sit down from 6:30 a.m. until at least 8:30 at night.

This whole thing kind of took me by surprise.  It happened kind of by accident.  I didn’t mean to sign us up for so much.  I didn’t expect B to get into so many of the activities he was interested in, and I wasn’t sure he’d enjoy them all as much as he is.  But, as it turns out, he’s having a great time, learning new stuff, and making new friends.  Liam, who can sometimes be inflexible and intractable in his own right, seems, surprisingly, to enjoy our daily trips to pick up B, and he is handling the loss of some of his naps much better than I expected.  For Dan & I, this new schedule means keeping a tighter rein on our own activities — meals have gotten less complex, we’re getting to bed earlier, and our regular TV times have entirely disappeared.  We’ve kind of gone from 0-60 on this whole school thing.

But, though it was unintentional and it is a bit overwhelming, in a way I’m kind of enjoying it.  It’s exhausting, both physically and mentally, to balance this many items on our schedule, but there’s a great deal of satisfaction in seeing B learn and enjoy so many things.  (Though I do have a tendency to look for the upside to any situation, so maybe I’m just finding the positives because I’m looking for them.)  Also, this is temporary — it’s for a semester, not forever.  B has already expressed a desire to drop swim lessons after he can swim across the pool unassisted (my own standard for him being “done” learning to swim), and we’ll see how many of the activities he may choose to continue with (and which he’ll be able to get into) next semester.  I’m still not sure that this packed-full schedule is really “us”, but it’s certainly another kind of adventure.

For now, we’re getting through it, enjoying it, and gaining a whole new appreciation for our precious few moments of free time.  I also have a newfound respect, and a bit of awe, for the families who keep up this kind of schedule for years and years.  Also, I have a huge backlog of planned and partially written blog posts, and I’ll get around to those eventually … but for now, this soccer mom will probably be commuting more and composing less.

Golf

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Benjamin’s school, being generally wonderful, has a full complement of after-school sports and activities for the kids to participate in.  They have about 50 different things that the kids can do after school — everything from Cub Scouts to soccer to rugby to crafts to the math club.  Lots of choices.  And the activities are, apparently, wildly popular — there is an online registration setup which is one of those things where you lurk on the website until the moment the page opens, sign up the instant that you can and hope you get a spot.  Since it wasn’t the kind of thing that allows for indecision, I set aside the time at noon the day of the sign up to be at my computer to pounce on the sign-ups, and sat down with B the night before to talk through the options and discuss his preferences.

As we were going through, at first he wasn’t sure he wanted to do anything.  He said that school is busy enough, and maybe he didn’t want to stay after school even once a week.  And I was totally cool with that.  But, I wanted to be sure, and as we went through the list, he latched on to both gymnastics and soccer as the things he most wanted to do, which didn’t surprise me — those were the two I most expected him to pick.  But then, we got to golf.  And he said, “No, that’s it. I want to do golf.  I want to learn how to be even better than Uncle Peter and Uncle Adam.”

He’s never golfed before, so it was a total surprise that he was so intensely interested in it.  I have no idea if he’ll enjoy it (and neither does he), but I love the enthusiasm and confidence in his choice.  And I just keep smiling over the idea of my little guy bonding with his uncles, an ocean away, over this game that they love and which hopefully he will be able to share with them when we are all together.

Because of the way the sign ups were done, I went ahead and signed him up for all 3 of his favorites — golf, gymnastics AND soccer — because I wasn’t sure whether we’d get a spot in any of them.  As it turns out, we got a spot in each, and now B is into the idea of all 3, so we’ve gone from maybe not wanting to do any to committing to 3 days per week for the semester.  In truth, I think he’s going to love them all, and I’m excited to see which (if any) kindle a true passion in him.  But, in particular, the idea of him out golfing with my brothers one day is pretty special.  I might be hoping, just a little, that he loves golf most of all.

Classroom helper

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I was impressed by teachers before, but after spending part of a morning helping out in B’s class, I’m even more so.  I had a great time.  I was worried, beforehand, that I wouldn’t be able to handle it.  I’ve always wanted to be able to help out in my kids’ classes, but I was concerned that either my inner control freak or my outer introvert would be overwhelmed by facing 22 first graders.  But it was nothing like how I thought it was going to be.

I was in charge of an arts & crafts/reading project that involved glue and scissors, as well as having the kids read some labels and attach them to their pictures.  It was a bit of a challenge to keep on top of where in the project each child was, but it was a lot of fun.  And the kids are AMAZING!  I was so impressed to see how each one did — some were great with the scissors and neat with the glue, some made an enthusiastic mess; some were lightning fast readers, others struggled but kept consistently working at it; some were patient, some demanded consistent attention.  But they all worked diligently at the project.  They shared, they cooperated, they were kind to each other.  They were awesome.

I, on the other hand, was a bit of a mess.  I’m the exact opposite of a good arts & crafts mom — my concern about messes and injuries majorly interferes with my kids’ enjoyment of the process.  I do ok with projects involving stickers, crayons or chalk.  Scissors and glue … not so much.  But I was able to keep my obsessiveness at bay enough for the kids to get on with their work.  And besides, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had tried to be obsessive — I don’t think it’s possible to micro-manage 5-6 kids at a time (or, at least, I don’t know how).  I kept misplacing supplies, and I was so slow at getting everyone started (and at keeping them going) that my station was a bit of a bottleneck (I think I had 10 or 11 kids at one point).  But it was great.  I had so much fun, and I was so impressed by the kids.

At the end of our projects, the teacher put on the “Happy” song, and the kids danced around the room tidying up, without complaint.  They put away all the scissors, glue, paper, yarn and pencils we’d been using.  I had trouble keeping up!  Then the teacher had them collect their snacks, which they did, and then they each took a spot and had their snack.  One boy cried because a girl sat in “his” spot (they don’t actually have assigned spots), and though the teacher was in the process of encouraging him to find another spot, the girl moved so he could sit where he wanted.  (It was like being in a whole classroom full of Benjamins!)

After snack time, it was time for their first recess of the day, so the kids changed their shoes and lined up to go outside.  I said goodbye to B and they all went out while I stayed in the classroom to help the teacher make a collage of pictures from a field trip they’d taken earlier in the week.  She and I got a chance to chat some more, which was lovely.  (Not only do I think she’s a pretty perfect teacher for B, but I think she’s someone I’d be friends with.)

It was a great day.  I had the best time.  I am so grateful for being able to come in and help (I hope I really did help!) and really glad that B was glad to have me there.  It was even more fun than I’d anticipated, and the time really flew by.  I can’t wait to go back next week!