Kindergarten
I am relieved that my children are nearing the close of their kindergarten, fourth and sixth grade school years, respectively, in part because I'm not sure I have the strength to sign one more permission slip nor to oversee the painfully slow completion of one more mixed review math worksheet whose concepts appear to be brand spanking new to my little student.
Mostly, however, I am relieved that my children are nearing the close of their kindergarten, fourth and sixth grade school years, respectively, because no one graduates from these years. Last year my son "graduated" from preschool and my oldest daughter "graduated" from elementary school. I find all of this "graduating" absurd. Deep down inside we all know we each deserve only one graduation and some of us didn't even get that far. There is something about listening to a high achieving fifth grader make a speech about the future that makes me stir in my folding chair. The preschool ones are worse:
"This morning while I ate from the center of my toast, with the familiar sounds of my Mom begging me to hurry in the background. I held my toast up from my plate and thought. I thought the hole in my toast looks like an "O". My fellow preschoolers, "O" is for opportunity. Next year we'll be kindergartners. We're not babies anymore.
From here on in almost everything we put in our mouths will be a food or a drink. Choking hazards are a thing of the past. No more crying when we get dropped off at school. Instead we'll part dry eyed at the kindergarten classroom door barking orders at our adult care givers about what snack we want tomorrow and whose house we'd rather live at. Kindergarten is an opportunity to find out who we are and first grade is when we lose homework credit for not writing it at the top of the page.
"O" is also for obesity and let me remind you we're in the midst of an epidemic. We'll be bigger than the preschoolers next year. So lets do our part to control the epidemic by chasing the preschoolers a little faster on the yard..."
I didn't get the entire text of the speech because the wind was blowing
over the Mr. Microphone and I got distracted by the juice spillers. It must have prepared them though because kindergarten has gone fairly smooth.
Posted by Paula at June 14, 2004 11:31 AM
