School Days

It’s a new day, a new week and the first Monday in August, 2014. Today is also the first day of our new school year. Grade Four. Chloe has been excited about grade four for a long time. We got the new books before the end of third grade. Recently I’ve been finding her on the floor next to the boxes with grade four books all around her, deep into one or another of her new texts. She has already read the health book, science, history and discovered the stories in her readers. I’m familiar with fourth grade. I’ve taught it before. It is a wonderful transitional year. Fourth is the first in three years of deeper learning, broadening subject material and finer tuning of the reading and writing skills. Children have more of the finer motor skills. Chloe is learning to bake and she can do her own cast on in knitting now. She has more focus when writing. Her picture books look more detailed and she can now type out her stories more quickly. She is ready for more learning. I love to teach a student who can’t wait to learn. With the right curriculum it isn’t even really teaching. It’s learning together. Clearing the way. Opening the doors. Setting the stage. It is up to me to make learning easier for her. I have to learn to be quiet sometimes. To moderate my activities so that they aren’t that interesting to her so that she won’t be distracted. I have to put my singing and bursts of enthusiasm on mute while she figures out long division, looks up words in the dictionary, reads her lessons. History and science are together-time subjects. I love learning as well and could do these years over and over. I haven’t become tired of the primary grades yet. We have environments in our home. They don’t look like much to an outsider. They sure don’t look any different than any other time but during school days they take on different meanings. The dining room table. There is one seat there which she loves to sit in to do Language and to read to me. I sit across from her and either knit or crochet while she reads. It is our first meeting place since her day begins. She does her journaling, math drills, spelling and poetry without me, although I’m not far away and get caught up in the wonderful poetry included in her curriculum. But we always meet up for reading. She reads to me in the mornings and I read to her in the evenings. She has a little wooden desk which we bought for her when she started preschool, around age two. She prefers to sit there to do her math. It has a lift up top and a little groove across the back of the top where she can put her pencils. She keeps a pencil sharpener there and a huge eraser which she got from her sister. The eraser says in big letters, OOPS. This is her usual place for battling through her necessary daily math page. She has a little bulletin board on the wall in front of her desk where she pins her favorite things. History, science and health are couch subjects. We sit together there in the afternoons and study all kinds of things. Places, people, times, body, manners, oceans, seeds, jungles, teeth and bones. There is a huge map of the world in the next room where we can stand and discover some of the world’s places. She has another desk in the sunny room with a computer where she studies Spanish and practices typing skills. Then there is the piano bench where she sits a couple of times a day and works out new songs, plays the familiar and pounds out scales and arpeggio’s. I love the time of day when she practices her piano. Listening to her play, while I fold laundry, wash dishes or bake bread. This year I am writing and illustrating a children’s book. I know that she will be playing the piano, learning Spanish or struggling through her math while I’m deciding between words, which ones to put on a page or sketching out numerous options for pictures. The tricky part for me will be to be quiet while she works. I’m a big girl though, so I think that this year I can handle that. I love our school days. I love the structure. I think that most parents love the structure of school days no matter where their children school. I love the challenge of keeping school special for her. No grind going on here. Except for math. This year we will begin going to the library again. Every two weeks. I want to read children’s books and see what’s newly published, and by whom. I want to start doing book reviews on my blog. Children’s books of course. Chloe wants to discover new worlds. I’m curious to see which books will draw her in and where her interests are. She wants to learn about other countries so I bought her a country scrapbook. The book will guide her to research the country of her choice and step by step put together a book about it. She wakes up now while I’m writing this. She is ready for her new year. It will be a short school day since many subjects do reviews and introductions on day one and some don’t even have a lesson yet. We have planned to go to the fair this afternoon. You can’t beat a school which starts right off the first day with a field trip to the county fair. It will be a sunny day and not too hot although it may get toasty on the pavement. We plan to go on some rides and eat fair food, ice cream, see the animals and play some games. Last year we got Max the penguin. I wonder what we will get this year. Once a year we eat cotton candy. Well, we don’t really eat much. We buy it, taste it and save the rest. It feels good to have it. Everyone should know what cotton candy tastes like.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise 1,042 words.