If you have been following my blog for long, you may remember my “first year of school jitters” in sending Kylie off to school. Well we made it!
Kylie, my “little baby”, graduated Kindergarten and I couldn’t be more proud of her. She has changed so much over this first year of her adventures in school.
I don’t think I really understood the importance of Kindergarten, or how much she would change over the year. Of course, there are the basics that I expected; a more solid grasp of numbers, alphabet, basic words and she is very close to reading. But she has grown so much as a little lady.
If you aren’t familiar with the Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, here is a short quote that gives you the idea:
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest word of all—LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
Deep Kindergarten
As I write this I am sixty-five years old. Not so old, really, but I have been around awhile. Kindergarten is a long way back there. What do I know now?
The Kindergarten Credo is not kid stuff.
It is not simple. It is elemental.
How true is that!? After seeing Kylie change through the year, I definitely agree with that quote. And of course have to thank her teachers for being a great influence on her growth.
Now I get to start all over with my son starting this August, that ought to be interesting 😉
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