School Days...

Smush is going to be 3. I can't even begin to believe this. 3. WOW!!!! Not so long ago she was just an idea and now she is 3. I am hoping that certain things will happen soon, by being a BIG girl... first of which is potty learning. She certainly knows how to use the toilet, it's just a matter of doing it. Of course, out of the mouths of babes... the other day I manage to get her to sit on her little red potty to take care of some business and as she is sitting there she says, with a twinkle in her eye and a huge grin, "Can I have a present?" Basically meaning, okay, I sat on the potty, I didn't use my diaper, what are you planning on giving me. We are prepared for this. For peeing on the toilet or potty she has been getting pieces of a clock puzzle toy. She has the base, and numbers 1-4. But, this was big, it was #2, so I gave her a book that I had bought a while back that I had wanted to give her but wanted to save for an occasion. This was that occasion.

Smush now has the book "Knitting Nell" in her collection. This is the third of 3 knitting or yarn/fiber based books that I have found and given to her for different reasons. The first was "Flusi and the Sock Yarn" which is put out by Regia Yarn Company. Lastly we have a really cute version of Baa Baa Black Sheep that shows the sheep knitting gifts for all the other farm animals, as well as providing wool for the master, the dame and the little boy who lives down the lane. Whenever I see books like this I buy them for her, put them away and then give them so her as new books need to be added to the rotation. I haven't figured out yet what types of books to be looking for for Squiggly. I'll have to work on that.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I had an interesting phone call tonight and thought it was a good opportunity to share some thought on schooling. Smush is still home with me. Many people ask us when she is going to start school. As if she won't be spending enough time in school when the time comes! I don't really understand this pushing kids into school earlier and earlier. When we went to school we started w/ Nursery School which was a few times a week for a morning or an afternoon and we were 5, I think. Then we went to Kindergarten. Smush will be 3 in 2 weeks. There are people who can't understand why she hasn't already been in school this past year. Ummmm... so someone else can change her diapers and watch her hit milestones? So she loses the joy of free playing and no set schedule to prevent us from going into the city or the zoo, or the carousel?

I tell you, the looks we get when it comes out that she isn't signed up to go someplace in the fall... Whoa, you'd think we were going to be messing her up for the rest of her life by not sending her to an expensive pre-school program where she might be told what colors to draw with and which page to draw on. I don't think so. Not yet, at least.

The phone call, thought, was intriguing. We haven't really discussed what school we will be sending her to when the time comes. I suppose we should start talking about it as the fall of 2011 is out there and usually signups are the spring before... Anyway, our local Yeshiva (religious school) has been holding some focus groups to see what parents are looking for in an elementary school education for their children. There are many different types of yeshiva schools, including co-ed and separate gender. Then, within the co-ed schools there are some separations when the children get a little older for different subjects.

I had often thought that the joy of an all girls school would be that not just for the Judaic subjects (which is why schools in the yeshiva world are separate gender) but for the math/science classes. I struggled mightily in math all through school and I wonder what might have been different, or if it would have been different, had I been in an all girls environment. Who knows. However, the literature does point to stronger math and science skills in those separate schools. But, it would mean busing to a school outside our little community here and I don't know if I want to do that. Of course busing is a whole other issue that I hope to write about soon as it is going to be on our local school budget ballot. More on that later. It's late and I need to get going!