I have been asked on numerous occassions by a variety of different people what things I am doing at home in order to prepare Calvin for preschool. "Aren't you worried that, not being in daycare, he will be behind all the other children when he finally gets there?" they ask. Well, until now it hadn't occurred to me to be concerned, but tonight I did a bit of research to find out what other moms in my position are doing and came away very reassured (I think my new favorite researcher/writer is bound to be David Elkind, author of The Power of Play, and Miseduction: Preschoolers at Risk). So we're not spending 20 minutes a day on this lesson, or 10 minutes on that one, but today we walked to the the store and on the way we spent 20 minutes playing on a tree stump; he climbed on it and jumped off; we noticed the rings and counted them to calculate the age; we looked at living trees that were about the same size nearby; we talked about what things might have been made out of the tree after it was felled (the woodchips at the park, the deck on the nearby house, the furniture in his bedroom), and then we looked for trees that might have been born about the time that one sadly died. At nap time we read a book about trees, and over dinner he recalled for his dad much of what we talked about. We spent no structured time in lessons today, instead we learned in play. Just now I was reminded of all this by a poem I found on an educator's site:
I took his hand and followed
(by Mrs. Roy L. Pfeifer)
My dishes went unwashed today,
I didn't make the bed,
I took his hand and followed
Where his eager footsteps led.
Oh yes, we went adventuring,
My little son and I...
Exploring all the great outdoors
Beneath the summer sky
We waded in a crystal stream,
We wandered through a wood...
My kitchen wasn't swept today
But life was gay and good.
We found a cool, sun-dappled glade
And now my small son knows
How Mother Bunny hides her nest,
Where jack-in-the-pulpit grows.
We watched a robin feed her young,
We climbed a sunlit hill...
Saw cloud-sheep scamper through the sky,
We plucked a daffodil.
That my house was neglected,
That I didn't brush the stairs,
In twenty years, no one on earth
Will know, or even care.
But that I've helped my little boy
To noble manhood grow,
In twenty years, the whole wide world
May look and see and know.
