Normalization

Today, Matthew's teacher told me in private that he was not particularly focused this morning and that she had asked him multiple times to choose a work.  After about the fourth time, he responded with a gruff, "I KNOW, that's WHAT I'm DOING!"  This is okay -- he is in a Montessori classroom, it's his first year, it's understood.

I didn't discuss it with him. 

Later in the day, I heard this conversation between David and Matthew:

David: What work did you do at school today, Matthew?
Matthew: Eh, I mostly just wandered around and didn't do any work.
David: You . . . wandered around?
Matthew: Yeah. Well, most of the time. Most of the time I just wandered around and stuff. But I did do one work!
David: What work did you do?
Matthew: It is something called "challenging work."

Big boy goodbyes

Matthew started going to his new preschool about a week ago.  He's loving it and has happily said goodbye to me every morning.  This morning, as usual, I bent down to give him a hug before I left.  He glanced around uncomfortably and, from a few feet away, gave me a little wave.  "Bye Mom."
"Can I have my hug?" I said.

"Moooommmm," he muttered as I knelt with my arms spread foolishly.

"So . . . can I have a high five?"  He reluctantly high fived me and hurried off to join his friends.

Tonight, he told me that I can hug him anytime.  At home.  Not at school.  But, if I would like to give him a fist bump and say, "Blow it up!" when I drop him off at school, that would be acceptable.

In the car

This morning in the car, the boys were playing the syllable game.  'Cause that's how we roll.

"Matthew, how many syllables in 'neighbor?'" said Cameron.

"Nay *clap* burr *clap*  Two!" answered Matthew.

"Right!  How many syllables in 'insect?'"

"In *clap* sect *clap* Tttt.  Tttt.  Hey!  There's a T in insect!"

At this point, I interjected, "There is a T in insect!"

"Yep," replied Matthew.  "Aaaand, insects don't have a backbone but we do."

"Matthew!" said Cameron. "Are you learning about insects right now?"

"Uh huh."

"What insects have you learned about?  Can you tell me some insects?" asked Cameron.

"Well," said Matthew authoritatively, "there are blue insects.  And there are some green insects . . . "

I totally knew what a biome was.

When I picked Cameron up from school on Tuesday, I asked him how his day was.  "IT WAS GREAT!!!" he said.

Cameron rarely says he had a bad day at school, but this was a more enthusiastic response than usual.

"What was so great about it?" I asked.

"Well, I spent all afternoon working with my friend on a diorama!  It's a pop-up diorama of the biomes of Africa.  Oh!  And I need to bring in some cardboard from home, because we want to make it stand up more.  Oh!  And?  Guess what?  I drew a bunch of animals for the diorama and tomorrow we're going to do even more!"

At this point I had to interrupt to ask was a biome was, which led to Cameron giving me that pitying look that makes me feel hopelessly clueless.  "Uh, Mom?  A biome?  You know, like in Africa the biomes are grassland, desert and rainforest?"

"Right.  Of course.  I was just making sure you knew what a biome was," I fibbbed.  "So, is the diorama one of your weekly assignments?"

"No! It was free choice!"

How cool is it, first of all, that Cameron chooses his own work and, second of all, that he chooses to make a diorama of African biomes???

Matthew's School Day

After visiting Cameron's classroom a few weeks ago, it was off to Matthew's for the day.  He was sooooo excited to have me visit.  As it turns out, his best friend (I'll call her Renae here) was also very excited to have me visit.  Although Renae is 5 and Matthew is 3, they have been largely inseparable this year.  Renae is a sweet, smart, friendly girl who has many times helped me out by taking a reluctant Matthew's hand in the morning and saying, "Come on!  We'll have fun!  And I would miss you if you weren't here!" 

Renae calls me "Matthew's mom," and during Parent's Visiting Day I think I heard, "Matthew's mom" about as much as I heard, "Mommy."  "

Matthew's mom, Matthew's mom!  Watch me do this skeleton puzzle!" 

"Matthew's mom, Matthew's mom!  Come sit near me, I'm having snack!"  So I watched Matthew and Renae do a loooootttt of two person works together!  Once in a while, Matthew would select a one person work, like the transferring work in the photo above.  Renae would quickly select a work and take her seat next to him!

The following day, David went to Parent's Visiting Day and was not nearly as popular with Renae!  He said Matthew chose lots of one person works without interruption. 

Keeping my mouth shut

Today, I spent the morning with Cameron at his school.  He has been talking about his art class all year long, so I was excited to see it.  The class was discussing artist Gustav Klimt, which floored me from the start.  My recollection of first grade art class definitely did not include raising your hand and answering questions with "He's an Austrian symbolist painter."  Cameron even raised his hand to volunteer that the bodies in Klimt's work were "mosaic."  He leaned over to me and whispered, "I was straining to remember the word at first, but then I remembered, 'Mosaic!  Like a Lego mosaic!'" 

I found the discussion of how to draw a realistic face fascinating, as I am unable to think about faces without thinking about my Dysmorphology course in grad school.  "What's the rule of the third eye?" asked the teacher.

"Ooooh!  The distance between your eyes is the same as the length of an eye!  So if you draw three eyes in a row and erase the middle one, that's the right distance between the eyes!" volunteered a student.

Silently I thought, "Well, unless you're hyperteloric . . ." and scanned the class, noting who might have made a more realistic self-portrait had they only been schooled in dysmorphology.

"And where do we draw the ears?"

"Imagine a straight line from the eye!"  came the answer.

Again, I reflected, "Yes, typically.  But of course the ears could be low-set.  Or posteriorly rotated."

It's a good thing I know how to keep my mouth shut.

Cameron's Klimt-inspired self-portrait was amazing and awaits only the "mosaic" body to be complete. 

In the classroom, Cameron showed me how he manages his own time, choosing the order in which he does his work.  I repeatedly had to remind myself that he gets his work done without his teachers nagging him, so I too should keep my mouth shut even though I wanted to tap his paper from time to time and say, "Cameron!  Pay attention!  Next problem!"  When I left at lunch time, he had completed his grammar work, his math work, his language work and his daily assignment.  His organizer still had a long list of work in it, though, and I feared that he'd never get it all done.  But, once again, the Montessori method works -- a few hours later, he hopped in the car and announced, "I got all of my daily work done and even finished all my weekly assignments ahead of time!"

So I'll just keep on keeping my mouth shut, and be happy that it works!

Give it to me straight.

I made this farm set using colored pencils and cardstock.  Matthew loved playing with it and added a few dinosaurs just to liven things up.  The ducks promptly fled the pond.

Then I decided to use the farm in a Montessori language assignment.  Cameron is my ever-ready volunteer.  He's super helpful, pointing out where I've made mistakes and saying things during my practice presentation like, "Um, Mommy?  My teachers always sat on THIS side of me when they showed me a work."  He also loves to review which of his old preprimary classmates would have loved or hated my idea.  "Andrew would choose this work all the time."  His favorite part is faking a mistake to see how I handle it.  "I really knew that was called a silo, but I don't know if every preprimary kid would, so I figured I'd pretend I didn't."

When he reviewed my farm lesson, he had this to say.  "You have to draw the chicken again.  Your chicken?  Well, it looks like a duck wearing underwear."

What can I say?  I'm training to be a Montessori teacher, not an artist.  It appears, however, that the two sometimes overlap.  Or should.

Tricky

The other day, I picked Matthew up from his Montessori preschool and asked him about his day as we drove home.  "Did you work with your teacher?" I asked.

"Yes!" he replied.  "We did I Spy!" 

I felt a thrill of excitement.  In my Montessori training class we are focusing on the Language area right now and we just did I Spy!!!  "Oh!" said.  "You did I Spy!  Did the teacher ask you to find something that began with mmmmm?"

"Not like THAT Mommy!"  Matthew protested.

"Sorry.  Did your teacher say, 'I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with mmmmm?'"

"Yes, like that!  And gueesssss what?  I TRICKED HER!" Matthew cackled with glee.

"You . . . tricked her?  How?"

"I was supposed to give her the mop, but I gave her the elephant!" he said.

"Ohhhhh," said I.  "And then . . . did you tell her it was a trick?"

"Nope!" said Matthew proudly.  "I reeeaaallllyyyy tricked her!  She thought elephant started with mmmm!"

Not Matthew

The other day, Matthew came home with this in his backpack.

"Matthew!" I said.  "Did you do name tracing work today?"

He looked at me quizzically.  "No."

I held up the piece of paper with his name on it.  "Did you do this?"

"Yes."

"Wow!  Matthew, you traced your name!"

Matthew replied, "Noooo, mama.  That's not my name.  That's called scribbling."

Two Weeks or So

Matthew started preschool this week.  He has been anxiously awaiting this moment ever since we toured his school over six months ago.  We drive past it every day on the way to Cameron's school and every day Matthew would say, "Am I going to my school today?" 

It was exciting to finally answer, "Yes!"

Matthew marched into school like an old pro, giving me a quick thumbs up.  Slightly taken aback by his confidence, I lingered a moment and then made my retreat.  I secretly snuck back in after Matthew was settled in his classroom and spent the next few hours observing him through the Top Secret One-Way Mirror (TSOWM). 

Only parents are supposed to know about the TSOWM.  Cameron didn't know about the TSOWM in his school for years, finally figuring it out in kindergarten.  But on the drive to school that morning, Cameron helpfully said to Matthew, "Matthew, when you get to your class, look and see if there is a mirror.  Then go up to it and wave, because Mommy is probably on the other side of it."  So much for Top Secret!

It was so much fun to watch Matthew at work.  After the teacher demonstrated unrolling a rug, Matthew got his own and attempted to unroll it.  He placed it the wrong way though, so each time he pushed it the whole roll just moved along instead of unrolling.  After several attempts he corrected his error and patted his rug contentedly.  I watched him draw a picture ("A butterfly and a target," he later explained to me), do a tearing paper work with intense concentration, do a matching work with the teacher, and work on the sandpaper numbers with another teacher ("This is three," he said pointing to the three.  "And here's another three!" as he pointed to the eight.) 

I stayed long enough to ensure that the food allergy rules we had set in place were followed at snack time, then used my remaining hour to run an errand and put gas in the car.  It. Was. Amazing.  Running errands with no kids is SO much easier!

I picked Matthew up and as soon as he got in the car he said, "I can't WAIT to tell Cameron that I went to school!" Followed by, "How long was I there?  Two weeks?"

The Boys are Back

It's sort of rough to adjust back to everyday life after a no-kid vacation, even if it was only a few days.  All week I felt slightly put out when I woke up and realized that no one was going to serve me quiche on the porch.  Pour my own cereal?  And cereal for the boys??? And instead of lounging by the pool, I was shouting "No running on deck!" to a cackling, unrepentant Matthew during Cameron's swim lessons.

But it was also good to be back with my boys, back in our routine of bike rides and books and bathing suits.

Of course, interspersed with all my actual parenting was a ridiculous amount of Montessori-related reading.  My mind, it turns out, is not effortlessly absorbent.  No, my mind tires of talk of spiritual embryos and refinement of the senses after a few pages.  Nonetheless, it's sinking in.  This I know because at our rockin' transracial adoption playgroup I watched the kids play hide and seek and refrained from lecturing the other parents on how the children are so obviously in the sensitive period for order.  I have got to find some time for some non-Montessori reading or I am going to be no fun to hang out with at all. 

Whew.

Golly, it's been a while!  Where have I been?  Well, let's see.  After my last post, we went to Michigan to visit with my grandparents.  My grandparents got to see all of their great-grandkids at once!  We had a wonderful time.  Cameron played in the water and Matthew spent the day working on his fast ball.

The boy has an ARM!

Then, we came back home and my week of chaos fun began.  Here are some photos from the week.

Fishing, bowling, hiking, putt-putt and more!  Oh my, there are so many funny stories from this week!  So many adventures!  So many memories!  You should have heard what Matthew said!  And you wouldn't believe what Cameron did!

But me?  I can't tell you any of it.  David stayed home with the boys this week. And me?  This is what I did.

Okay, so I've got a photo of scooping work for my Practical Life album.  Shoot, is that a drop of water on the table?  Where the heck did that come from?  Okay, stay calm, that's fine.  I'll just crop it out.  Augh!  The beans are in the bucket on the right!  They're supposed to be on the left!  Left to right, indirect preparation for writing.  Dang it.  Can I turn the photo over so the beans look like they're on the left?  Oh, shoot, that would make the ladle look like it was handle up instead of handle down.  ARRRGGHHHH!!!  Where's my notebook?  To do:  Take new photo of bean scooping work.  BEANS ON LEFT.

I started training to become a certified Montessori teacher and this week was our intensive.  All day, every day, ending with a miserable drive home in rush hour traffic with a broken air conditioner.  I had Montessori dreams at night, when I finally went to bed after reading and lesson planning and journaling.  It's been a long time since I had those kinds of dreams.  Like when I was taking physics.  Or calculus, oh, the calculus dreams!  At least Montessori dreams don't involve derivatives but let me tell you, you CAN have a nightmare about table scrubbing.  The basin, the bucket, the scrub brush . . . oooh, I get panicky just thinking about it.

Good news is, despite being exhausted, I loved it all and am really excited about this new direction.  And the boys had the best week ever with the best daddy ever -- just in time for Father's Day!

Anatomy Lessons

Last week, Cameron's class visited a farm.  They delighted in collecting eggs, holding chicks, bringing water to the ducks and learning about composting.  This was particularly entertaining to me, as we've recently started composting and Cameron is into it big time.  "And you can even compost coffee grounds!" said the farmer, as Cameron turned to raise his eyebrows at me and nod knowingly. 

The highlight, however, was milking the goat.  "Should I bring in a boy goat or a girl goat to milk?" she asked the class.

"A girl goat!" several children chorused.  This got a few of the boys riled up and they began to chant, "BOY! BOY! BOY!"

"Only girl goats can give milk," explained the farmer.  She brought in a goat who appeared to need to milking so badly that I don't know how she could walk.  All the mothers in the audience gave an audible groan of empathy.

The farmer introduced the goat and then asked the children, "How can you tell that this is a girl?"

A little boy waved his hand in the air enthusiastically.  "She has a GIRL name!" he shouted triumphantly.

"Well, let's say you didn't know the goat's name.  Is there another way you could tell?" 

"Oooohhh!" said another child, pointing.  "Because of THOSE!"

"That's right," said the farmer.  "Do you know what those are called?"

"YES!" squealed a boy.  "They're the gutters!"

Cameron Lets 'Em Down Easy

Cameron just relayed a story to me over dinner which apparently occured some months ago, but went unreported to me.

"Remember how I told you that Radhika broke my sunglasses?" he said casually.

"Uhhhh, yeah, I think I remember that," I replied.

"Well, she used to be my friend but then she started being mean to me.  It all started because she wanted me to be her boyfriend."

"Reeeaaallly," I said.

"Yeah, and I said, 'Well, I'm your friend but I'm not your boyfriend.  Plus, I think it is a little too young to be boyfriends and girlfriends.' And then she ripped my sunglasses off my face and threw them on the ground!"

I'm so over that sensitive period.

As I've mentioned before, Cameron goes to a Montessori school.  I've never sat down and talked to him about the theories behind Montessori.  I've never said, "Cameron, you are in a 'sensitive period' for language."  I've never pointed out that his classroom provides structure as well as freedom to choose the work that interests him.  But yesterday, without knowing it, Cameron himself told me about how Montessori works.

We were working on some craft projects at home and Cameron painted a little picture on the cardboard that was protecting the floor from our craftiness.  "Look!" he said.  "It's a painting of me watering the grass."  Then he reflected, "You know, when I was in the youngest and the middle groups, I was really into painting on the easel.  But I'm kind of over painting now.  I'm just really into language and math at the moment."

9 x 9 is 81

I remember learning my times tables in second grade.  Mrs. Seivert handed out a mimeographed page with 1-10 in a row across the top and an identical column down the side, and what appeared to be random numbers in a chart below.  Then, I memorized the table.  Mission accomplished. 

Yesterday, I volunteered in Cameron's Montessori kindergarten class.  He was anxious to show me how he is learning multiplication and we he did show me, I understood why.  It's fun.  And you actually get to see how multiplication works. 

He was working on his 8 times tables.  For each number, there is a bar of beads -- the brown bars each have eight beads on them.  So to figure out 8 x 9, Cameron would lay out nine brown bars and count the beads.  But here's the amazing part.  After he figured out that 8 x 9 is 72, he would then select 7 of the ten bars and 1 two bar to represent the answer.  Genius!

By the way, the nine times tables were always my favorite because the answer sums to nine.  9 x 2 is 18,  1 + 8 is 9.  9 x 3 is 27, 2 + 7 is 9, and so on.  I thought everyone loved this about the nine times tables, but then David told me he had never known that about them.  So, I figured I'd share the nine times table love for anyone else out there unfortunate enough not to know that trick.

Less Expensive than Disney

Finally, finally -- now that it's practically February -- I feel like I'm getting back into the swing of parenting in the winter.  We go Wii-free during the week, but if the boys are left to their own devices, they will play Star Wars until I break them up for clobbering each other with light sabers.  At which point Luke will retire to his bedroom to sulk and play Legos and Darth Vader will ask me over and over and over again to throw him the football.  It's taken me months to figure out what to do instead, and during those months I've confiscated the light sabers more than I care to recall.

Matthew Works

In Montessori, all of the activities are called "work," and I think there is something magical about this.  Sure, we grown ups have plenty of work to do and we'd often rather play, but kids?  For some reason, kids love work (except cleaning -- I have yet to figure out how to make that appealing to them).  Ask Matthew if he wants to do a puzzle and he is completely uninterested.  But make it work?  Make it important?  Put those puzzles on a plastic tray, let him carry the tray to the table to do "his work?" He'll proudly select the correct shapes to complete his puzzles and crow "Ta-da!" each time he finishes a  "work."  

Cameron's Words

As for Cameron, we've been doing lots of word activities lately, talking about homophones, anagrams, palindromes and rebuses.  Cameron has recently been bemoaning his lack of exciting news to share on the line at school -- "Everybody always has exciting news, like 'I went to Disney Land,' and then it's my turn and everybody is like, 'Oh, he's a kindergartener! He MUST have exciting news,' and OF COURSE, I don't!"  So rather than take him to Disney Land, I pointed out that 'sea' and 'see' are pronounced the same but mean different things.

Unbelievably, Cameron was so excited about homophones that he shared it for his news the other day and, as he tells it, it was a big hit.  (I am hoping that this is true.  I secretly fear that I am nerdifying my kid to the point that he doesn't even realize that nobody else is excited about homophones.  But then I look at my old classmates on Facebook and all the old nerds are super cool people now and all the old popular crowd don't seem quite as shiny and special as they used to.  Although some of the popular girls still appear to have really great hair - why, oh why, could I never get my bangs to stand three inches high in 8th grade?  But a lot of the popular guys are bald now!  But I digress.  My point is, so what if I'm making Cameron into a nerd?  He's gonna be an awesome grown-up.  And hopefully we're sending him to a school where maybe the other kids really do think homophones are cool!) 

Today, Cameron plans to share news about the rebus I made to tell him lunch was ready.  We'll see if his luck holds or if he's asking for a trip to Disney on the ride home.

If at first you don't succeed . . .

Recently, I opened Cameron's school bag and found this drawing.  "Cameron, what's this?" I asked.  I was pretty sure it was either the Death Star or some kind of Jedi fight scene or maybe a Lego Power Miners.

"Oh, that's my plan for the sand box," Cameron answered.

For weeks, Cameron has been reporting on the progress of The Great Sand Box Dig.  He and his friends have been foiled by rain, by girls stepping on their tunnels, by youngest groupers dumping sand in precisely constructed ditches.  But they don't let it get them down.  They keep digging.  Because as you can plainly see in the below diagram, it's gonna be really cool.  I'm talking tunnels and trenches and holes that reach the center of the earth kind of cool.

Cameron carefully explained the plan to me and then pointed to the red squiggles at the top of the page.  "See these?  These are two of the classrooms.  Not MY classroom, the other classrooms.  And they're red because they're on fire."

He said this very casually, which I found that much more disturbing.  After some discussion, this element of the plan seems to merely be a flair for the dramatic rather than a cry for help or a need to contact the school psychologist.  I mean, when you spend most of your time drawing Star Wars scenes, you need something to spice up a boring-looking plan.  Additionally, fire gives the tunnel system purpose.  I mean, let's say the classrooms are on fire and you flee to the playground?  Wouldn't you be glad that someone had planned ahead and dug escape tunnels to the center of the earth for you?

A few days later, I opened Cameron's school bag again and found this drawing.  "Cameron, what's this?"

Cameron gave a heavy sigh.  "Well, the sand box plan hasn't been going too good," he said.  "I had to come up with a Plan B."

This time, he's keeping it simple.  Cut-and-dry.  No fire, no drama, just a few simple tunnels and your run of the mill hole to the center of the earth.

Guess I Can Cancel the Megaphone Order

Cameron attends a Montessori school and I'm a big fan of their teaching methods.  I love that Cameron is learning independence, I love that he is able to both follow his own interests and be challenged, I love that he is in an environment that values respect, creativity and responsibility.  I have observed Cameron's class many time and have tried to apply many of the techniques at home.  And at Cameron's recent birthday party, I resorted to a technique his teachers use without even thinking about it.

Cameron, four of his Montessori classmates and two neighborhood friends gathered to celebrate Cameron's birthday and to have a LOT of fun with Legos.  At one point, the party was getting a little rowdy and I was trying unsuccessfully to get the boys' attention.  On a whim, I clapped my hands *clap clap clapclapclap*  Immediately, instantaneously, the five Montessori kids stopped what they were doing, turned to me and clapped back *clap clap clapclapclap*  And the other two kids stopped what they were doing to stare and wonder, " What was THAT about?"

I Might Love It Too

At dinner tonight I said to Cameron, "Guess what? President Obama is going to give a speech tomorrow. And guess who he's giving the speech to?"

"Who?" said Cameron.

"Kids who go to school. Like you!"

Cameron's face lit up. "Will I get to see it?"

"Yes! We'll watch it on TV," I said. (I didn't say, "At home. Because they aren't showing it at school. Huge uproar, long story.")

"I bet I know what he's going to talk about!" said Cameron with excitement.

"What?" I replied. (I didn't say, "Health care reform? The auto industry? Converting little school children into an army of socialists?")

"A longer school day!" said Cameron. "I think he's going to tell us that the school day will be longer now!"

David chimed in. "Oooh, that would be bad!"

"WHAT!?!?" said Cameron. "That would be AWESOME! I would love to be at school more!"