C-Monkey's Word-a-pillar Wall

"red" A very useful word.

Stay tuned.

Um, your opinion, please...

After 3 weeks of Kindergarten, should we not be seeing more than coloring pages coming home? Oh, there's the occasional page on which C-Monkey has written his name, and once he had to match blue to blue and pink to pink. But otherwise, nada. When Quatro was a Kinder, he was already bringing home pre-readers. C-Monk has a long term sub, and although her classroom is quiet and under control, I'm not seeing much academically. Yes, he is a squirrelly little boy, but he's bright, and he is starving to learn.

Kinder teachers and moms, am I expecting too much too soon?

Edit: C-Mama points out the coloring pages also include KinderMath functions, like understanding order, placement by size and other algebraic stuff. So maybe I should relax...

A Very Hungry Little Reading Boy

Riverside Unified School District has a set of words for each grade they call Sight Words, or No Excuse Words. These are words the kids will encounter a lot, and are expected to recognize on sight. So C-Monkey and I are making a Word Caterpillar. When he learns one of his Kindergarten words, we will add a segment to his caterpillar. By the end of his Kinder year, he should have a nice long bug. This week's words: "I" and "see". (OK, we're starting small, but he's a little boy, so we'll give him some slack!) As soon as we have more body parts than just a head, we'll take a picture. Thanks, Aunt Krista, for the fun idea to help us learn!

Eight Days a Week

Last Sunday, I was enjoying a pleasant early morning conversation with The Princess Bride. Then it began:
1. TheEarly Warning System -- StoopidDog growls, jumps up, barks at seemingly nothing.
2. The Sound -- like seriously heavy trucks driving thru the backyard, followed by a CRACK.
3. The Ride -- rolling/shaking, and a little flippy-floppy stomach thing.
4. And finally, the ultimate SoCal game of Richter Guess. Was it a 3? a 4? It wasn't a 5, but almost. A dash to the CalTech website, and we learn this one was 4.7, a decent earthquake by anyone's standards. We can hold our heads up.

The rest of the week was earthquake-worthy as well. A friend lost his mother suddenly, while the ex-son-in-law and his new wife had a baby boy (weird emotions going on here). C-Monkey's Kindergarten teacher created her own Richter scale, giving me the daily rating of his behavior. Mr Roboto began phase one of the homework battle: it's too hard or too easy or I'm hungry or I'm tired or I need a break (choose one).

Finally, Sunday morning the bookend earthquake hit San Diego, and although I am too far north to have felt it, San Diego is home for The Princess Bride, so I got the full report, numbers one through 4.

Quite a week.

First day of school!

TheGuys started school today which means...yep, we survived summer vacation. Their dad shaved their heads for school, so Mr Roboto looks like a City of Hope poster child. C-Monkey wanted...insisted...begged to have his entire family there for his first day of Kinder, so both aunties came. Do you suppose he ran into their arms and clung to them -- or any of us -- for fear of the unknown? Nope. Wouldn't leave the swing. Had a new friend, his BEST friend, I'm sure, and he couldn't have cared less that we were all there. We had to go physically remove him from the swing to tell us good-bye. Looks like he'll adjust fairly well. Mr Roboto's arch enemy, Brandon, whom we feared might be in the same building as Bubbs, is not only in the same building, but the same class, and actually sits directly across from Bubbs, desks touching. Irony, thy name is Third Grade Seating Plans.

Looks like we made it

Only one more week of summer, and TheGuys go back to school. We bought new shoes and a sizable stash of Tony Hawk t-shirts. We spent a good long time selecting the perfect backpack -- which is better: Spiderman? Superman? Batman? Transformers? SpongeBob? Thomas the Tank Engine? Camo?...college students don't face such dilemmas. Now the real trial of summer begins: the effort to change the interior clocks of a 5- and an 8-year old back to Early Bedtime mode. TheGuys attend a school which starts at like 7:45, so unless they go to bed at 4:30 in the afternoon, there's no way they're going to get their recommended twelve to fourteen hours of sleep. Phopl aims for a 7:30 bedtime during the school year. So next week, she starts acclimating them to going to bed before the streetlights come on.

I'm just saying, God bless the good folks at Benedryl.