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On his first day of Kindergarten, I made a deal with my son. Every day, when he comes home from school, Nano needs to tell me the following things about his school day:
1. Something that was easy.
2. Something that was hard.
3. Something new he learned.
4. Something nice he did for someone else.
Nano and I are working on this blog together, to document his journey through education. I don't know how long it will last; heck, I don't know how long my kid will happily come home and answer the "How was school?" question with something more than a grunt and a shrug. But that Nano shares these things with me is probably a lot less important than him contemplating his answers to those questions. They are the kind of metacognitive stuff that we educator-folk hope all our students will consider as they leave campus each day. More importantly, they're a simple model of the things each of us, as life-long learners, should ask ourselves when our heads hit the pillow each night.
These are his answers for today, and my questions for a lifetime of education, parenthood, and the honest, real perfection we touch without knowing it when we're in kindergarten....
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1. You know what? I was coloring G-words like goat, gas station, gopher, grapes... and that's all. And that was easy. Coloring is fun, but it's easy.
2. Something that was hard was cutting out the animals. (Why is cutting so hard for you?) Because I still need to find out which hand to cut with! (Are you left-handed or right-handed?) ...Kinda both. I kinda have to use both hands.
3. Something I learned was don't run in the woodchips. (Why not?) Because if you move too fast, they get into your shoes, and then you have to stop and take your shoes off, and that slows you down. So even if you go fast, you end up going slow in the end. And, I can't tie my shoes. (I see. So what was something you learned in class?) We read a story about how trees look in different seasons. Right now they're looking brown, red, and yellow, because it's Autumn... they don't have enough sunlight, so the leaves turn yellow. Plants make food from the sun, and that's called photosynthesis.
(Where did you learn about photosynthesis? In the book?) No. On PBS Kids. Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That.
4. Something I did nice for somebody was I helped put the balls away after second outside play. No one asked ME to do it, but all of us to do it. Some kids didn't help, but I didn't care.
My boy reminded me today that learning doesn't start or stop based on a bell schedule. Screen time is not synonymous with "waste of time" in all cases. One of the reasons my little kindergarten kid is reading chapter books with fluency and comprehension (other than being stuck with a pair of educator parents) is the valuable "teaching" he received from PBS cartoons like Word World, Super Why, and yes... even The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That. Those shows often provide a framework for conversations and experiences we've shared as a family on vacations, in nature, and even in social situations. And while he may not know the complex process by which plants make glucose and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water, he was able to make a connection between his prior learning (thanks, Dr. Seuss!) and the book shared in his classroom today.
We'll keep working on picking a hand--left or right--to be dominant. Or not. Heck, I still remember my first grade teacher requiring me to hang my left-handed scissors on a hook behind her desk, because there was no such thing as left-handed safety scissors when I was six. For years I started writing assignments with my left hand, and passed the pencil to my right hand mid-page. I throw right, eat left, write left, bat right, kick left... and yeah, Nano's definitely my kid. Ambidexterity seems to run in the family... still not sure what Nano is, but then, I'm still not sure about myself, either.
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