I love Little Kids

Luke, our nephew, came for a hike with us last weekend.  I am SO entertained by the sayings that come out of his little 7-year-old mouth!  This was a hike on a preserve where there are also mountain bike riders as well as people on horseback pounding the trails with us pedestrians.  Nora and Luke were hiking a bit ahead of my husband and I, when we noticed that they stopped and were analyzing something on the trail that lay between them.  As we approached, we saw the it was horse poop.  I asked, “What in the world is that?”  Luke answered right away, “It’s poop from a cow.”  We have never seen cows on the hills behind our house!  Ever!  And we’ve seen the horses getting in and out of their trailers at the trail head.  It made me laugh.  Obviously a city-fied boy…. once you’ve seen a cow pie, you could hardly mistake them for horse droppings!

A half hour later, we had come to a T in the path and turned west, having never gone that way previously.  My husband suggested that we take a picture of the trail map (from the trail head) when we get back so we could figure out where we had hiked.  I remarked that the trails are probably on a state website and we could just look them up on the computer.  Luke chimed in stating the obvious that I had obviously missed, “Auntie Linda, there aren’t any computers out here!”  As if to say DUH!

Last year when Luke was in kindergarten, every time I saw him I would ask him if he went to school that day (even on holidays and weekends.)  Did his teacher show up?  Did she teach him anything he didn’t already know?  And I tried with great effort to get him to raise his hand in class and ask, “When are you going to teach me something I don’t already know.”  I coached him.  I prodded.  I modeled. But he never asked.  Smart kid.

4 out of 4… I’m Golden

As it happened, I have completed the task every homeschool mother wonders if she will be capable, able and successful at finishing: teaching your children to read.  My first daughter was subjected to a charter school for kindergarten and grade one (that’s how we say it in Canada… not first grade) and I did not have the joy of teaching her to decipher the alphabet code.  But I figured, HEY!  How hard could it be???  Well, son number one, who followed daughter number one, had a brain that was wired quite the opposite of my first child reader.  She read with ease at five years old.  When my son turned five he was quite proficient at spitting, throwing rocks, yelling and doing everything at the same rate as Speedy Gonzales.  Reading was not on his list of interests….. until he was almost NINE!  Made me wonder if the kid would ever read.  Sheesh!  What good is a teaching certificate if you can’t even teach a kid to sound out three letter words?  Or simply remember the letter F?  Eventually some synapses connected in his overactive brain and he could read.  It happened while we were on a three month sick-leave trip touring national parks on the west side of the United States.  It had nothing to do with me.

Son number two actually read before son number one.  Assuming that this would provoke determination in son number one was completely incorrect on my part.  Son number one read after he had successfully toured Zion, Yosemite, Walnut Canyon, Fort Bowie and 14 other parks, caves and forts.  Had I known the national park tour was a prerequisite to his reading ability, we would have taken the trip three years earlier.  See?  Nothing to do with me.

Last week, I had the joy and privilege of teaching the Colombian princess to read.  She has been diligently learning her English phonograms and we have completed the first 26 of 72.  She asked me in frustration, “When am I ever going to be able to read WORDS?!?”  It was then that I realized she probably could with her vast knowledge of phonograms.  I put three phonogram cards together… c…….a……..t.  She sounded them out three or four times before her eyes popped open and she pronounced in her amazing reading ability, “CAT!”  Then we went through run, ran, hat, dot, hop, up, pop, cup, mop, tip, sip, and, hit, and even jump!  She was so excited she could not stop giggling!  I called for her sister and brothers to come and listen to her READ!  Her dimples were showing the rest of the day! It truly is a joy to see her succeeding by leaps and bounds and she hasn’t even been speaking English for 6 months yet.  It is also a true joy to be able to teach her. 

Back in the day when I taught kindergarten to several classes of German speaking kids, they did learn to read and I was proud of them for learning English and reading…. but nothing compares to it being your own kid who has broken the scribble code and can make sense of the English written language.

Four out of four.  I’m golden!

Where was my Mother???

The year was 1971 when the life I grew to love was changed for all eternity.  Happily I was enjoying kindergarten in my lavender and red polyester plaid jumpsuits, with matching ponytail ribbons and bobbles decorating my combed-to-perfection hairdo.  Then it happened.  This photo is proof of the stress that my mother and I went through after the birth of my sister.  I was no longer the only princess in the castle and my mommy obviously was too preoccupied to read the school handout I brought home that read, “Tomorrow is Picture Day.”  Look at my hair!?!  I don’t remember trying to give myself a perm.  How in the blazes did it turn out like THAT!?!  And a light pink bow with a red and navy outfit???  Horrors. 

Little did I know that 36 years later, that little, red wrinkled-up baby would give me a journaling jar with prompts in it…… prompts that should have read: “How do you feel about your kindergarten school picture?”, “How does it make you feel that your mother no longer worried about how you looked after your sister was born?”,  “Did your mother ever push you out the door for school with a smile on her face?” or “Write Oprah a letter revealing your inner feelings after the birth of your sister.”

But look at that face.  Joy unspeakable and full of glory.  :o)