Ups and Downs

Well, we caught a day or two of "ups" around here. No one had to go to the hospital. All of our pets are still alive. And X-man hasn't gotten a letter home from school since Tuesday. Yes, I know this is tempting fate, but I'm going to call good days -- good days -- and acknowledge that they exist. I'm not, repeat, not saying it's the end of the ugliness. It's just -- nice to have a break from it.

Yesterday, X-man got in the car for tennis lessons and told me it was a good day because he only got one check at school. I told him I didn't want the check number to determine what he thought was a good day. I wanted how he felt about learning that day to decide if it was a good day or not. He thought about it and said, "It was a good day because I earned two Starbursts. One for the practice fire drill and one for the actual fire drill."

I didn't have the heart to tell him the word "drill" meant "practice." So that he had to practice for the practice...

The hardest part about kindergarten for all of us appears to be the lack of "inquiry-based learning" that our house is used to. We're active learners. We listen, we engage, we practice, we explore and we make mistakes and learn from them. There's no memorization. There's rarely sitting still. There's a lot of focus on learning what we're interested in... which always leads to something else and something else. I'm used to curriculums that are molded to the students rather than molding students to the curriculum.

In some ways, I'm afraid the static curriculum might suck the joy of learning out of my child. On the other hand, what he gets from school is so much greater than the actual academic learning. So, for now, I'm figuring out ways to supplement that learning and working to keep my child engaged by answering his questions and creating family time around his curiosities (as well as showing him some of our curiosities).

Today, X-man got off the bus and told MacTroll that he won a handwriting contest, ran three times around the playground (they have an exercise challenge at school) and thought that his teacher was funny (as in ha ha). He couldn't really replicate what he thought was entertaining, but he was really happy. We gave him giant high fives for his hard work at school and acknowledged the effort he's been putting forth. Unfortunately, the sock destruction still occurs, but he's not disintegrating the whole sock any more.