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August 15, 2009
My First Day of Kindergarten
Some years ago, I got Tammy a very funny book, Great Lies to Tell Small Kids by Andy Riley. This is the same man who came up with the Bunny Suicides series, so that gives you an idea of its child-unfriendly tone, but I appreciate its spirit. Personally, I can’t resist telling lies to children. Not lies-lies, but total whoppers they’re bound to see through. For instance, I like to tell children that we have alligators living in a pit underneath the library’s meeting room. That’s a lie we can all have fun with.
I feel less comfortable with the real lies we tell children about life, although I join in quite enthusiastically with the other adults this time of year, telling all the Kindergartners that they’re going to love school. It’s not a total lie—most Kindergartners do, in fact, like school—but we don’t tell them the whole truth, either. We leave out the heartaches and difficulties that were part of our own school experiences. We don’t mention that sometimes teachers are mean, that some of the most shocking violence most of us have witnessed first-hand happened in school, that sometimes we skipped classes or pretended we were sick or turned our minds off because that seemed the best way to cope. It’s hard to convey to a five-year-old that there will be bright spots amid the existential despair, so we leave it out altogether. If you told the whole truth to a Kindergartner, he or she would refuse to get on the bus.
This is how a homeschooling advocate finds herself running a My First Day of School program just for Kindergartners every year. It’s not like I inherited the program—I introduced it here at WPL myself. It’s been very popular, and I’ll confess to enjoying it immensely. What we do is a 45-minute program that includes stories, a simple craft, and a short movie. I’ll include lists of what we’ve done below so you can mix-and-match your own program. (We have lots to choose from, as we like to change the program up a little every year.) As I tell parents, our program is not going to get children over any major anxiety they might have about starting school, but our goal is to approach the rite of passage with a spirit of celebration and fun, which I think we manage nicely.
Books/Stories
Bea and Mr. Jones by Amy Schwartz*
The Bus for Us by Suzanne Bloom**
David Goes to School by David Shannon
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems**
How Do Dinosaurs Go to School? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
“Monkey Face” by Frank Asch (draw-and-tell version, please)
School Bus by Donald Crews**
Welcome to Kindergarten by Anne Rockwell***
Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes
* You should hear Jason read this.
** Books about buses aren’t, strictly speaking, books about school, but there’s no doubt many children look forward to starting school exclusively because they’ll get to ride the bus.
*** This is my favorite step-by-step here’s-what-to-expect kind of book about Kindergarten.
Crafts
Decorate a folder
Decorate a notebook
Draw on black construction paper with chalk
Make a picture using paper or foam numbers and letters
Short Films
Chrysanthemum (Weston Woods)
Ella the Elegant Elephant (Spoken Arts)
Emily’s First 100 Days of School (Weston Woods)
School House Rock! segments (Disney owns this now.)
Teacher from the Black Lagoon (Weston Woods)
Posted by adrienne at August 15, 2009 07:52 AM
Comments
There are some things you can't protect your child from and the truths which can not be avoided must not be avoided,but I love this..."a spirit of celebration and fun."That should be taught early and often.Your program sounds wonderful.
Posted by: momster at August 15, 2009 12:07 PM
What a fabulous idea! My worst days of ...life did indeed occur, almost entirely, at school, and you're right -- there's no way you can convey that, and no point to doing so. Bring on the Kindergarten celebration! At least we can all applaud about that! And the alligators.
Posted by: tanita at August 15, 2009 12:45 PM
Mom, I quite agree about encouraging a spirit of celebration and fun. Might as well have fun when you can.
Tanita, I also tell them we have things living under the bridge in the children's room. (Do you know about our bridge? You can see it here: http://www.watat.com/archives/2006/08/adrienne_why_do.html. Yeah, my job's awesome.)
Posted by: adrienne at August 15, 2009 07:04 PM
there is such a mix of emotions with going to school. the highs like the start of the school year, new trapper keepers and pens, new classes before they get old, the excitement (or anxiety) of what friends are in your classes. The worse though for me was having to take aquatics in 9th grade. AQUATICS! Seriously? It was only a quarter and I think I had it the last quarter of the year and literally was in a panic about it the entire year.
It'll be a few more years before my Eleanor goes off to school....I want to make it a special time for her. each year.
Posted by: Cheryl at August 15, 2009 11:22 PM
Of course,I don't think you can tell what any particular kids experience in school will be.I think giving them the idea it will be fun is a good idea.When you were little I struggled when you would ask if something was going to hurt--like a shot.In the end I decided to try to be precisely truthful,saying-it will probably hurt for just a little while and then you can have some candy.But I fibbed often about many other things just to make fun.But not important things.
Posted by: momster at August 16, 2009 05:08 PM
I, for one, am grateful that you're using solid double-dashes in your postings instead of the vulgar double-hyphen (--) substitute. It makes for a much more pleasant aesthetic experience.
Posted by: Elsie the Ersatz Cow at August 16, 2009 08:05 PM
I always loved the book Bea and Mr. Jones. I think doing the Kindergarten program is a fabulous idea. Our community really seems to get excited about coming every year, as evidenced by your attendance numbers! You could probably run the program every day for a week and it would still fill up. I couldn't speak for your sanity by the end, though. ;)
Posted by: olivia at August 17, 2009 07:53 AM
Thanks for the props, yo.
Posted by: jp at August 17, 2009 11:30 AM
Cheryl, I still love my school supplies.
Elsie, Thank you for appreciating that. Some readers have trouble recognizing the dash that way, but I write my entries in Word and copy and paste them into my blog most of the time because I have such a hard time with the "--". I also prefer quotation marks that are curly instead of straight. I'm glad to know other people think about these things.
Olivia, Thanks! Your programs have been filling up lately, too. It's all the awesomeness in the air, I think.
Jason, And we'll all have a chance to hear you read it next week--twice, even! (Sorry about the "--", Elsie.)
Posted by: adrienne at August 17, 2009 11:38 AM
That's the reason I use hyphens for dashes when I write. Not because I don't know the difference, but because I hate the way the double-hyphen-as-a-dash looks. I remember we had a discussion about that way back when...
Posted by: jp at August 20, 2009 09:48 AM
Yes, but, Jason, you're wrong.
Posted by: adrienne at August 20, 2009 12:54 PM
I think one of the reasons I rejected the religion I grew up with so readily (by 5th grade, I was an atheist) was that everything was presented to me as undeniable fact, so as I found out that all of the facts were actually quite deniable, it was really easy for the whole house of cards to fall. I think if people told me from the beginning that we CHOOSE to believe certain things and others choose to believe other things and the world contains plenty of evidence to support or deny every belief system, then it would have been much easier for me to keep faith (in God and in adults). But 5th grade was when I realized that school sucks, 1/3 of teachers DO NOT have your best interest at heart, and Church was two hours of being lied to every Sunday
Posted by: chuck at August 20, 2009 05:22 PM
The first step of talking to kids about these things is admitting them to yourself, and that is where many adults get stuck.
Posted by: adrienne at August 20, 2009 05:26 PM
Posted by: chuck at August 20, 2009 05:26 PM
Tee.
Posted by: adrienne at August 20, 2009 05:32 PM
I think that telling children what you enjoyed about school is more honest than saying, "You will have fun at school." Though frankly, my husband and I both believe that had we gone to our daughter's school as children, we would indeed have had fun at school.
Posted by: Saints and Spinners at August 20, 2009 11:02 PM
Farida, Your daughter's school really does sound fun.
Posted by: adrienne at August 21, 2009 02:39 PM