I have a confession to make: I didn’t know my daughter knew how to write the alphabet. Like, to the point that I pulled a worksheet out of her backpack the other night that had to be traced and I held it up to my husband and said, “This can’t be Rauri’s…right? Or does she know how to write the alphabet and I’m a terrible mother for not knowing?” He was like, “That’s totally traced,” and then I nodded and threw it in the garbage because I’m a monster.
Don’t judge me! Or, I suppose you can judge me. Maybe I’m supposed to keep all of that stuff? But honestly, she’s gonna write a lot of alphabets in her young life and so I can’t keep them all because becoming a hoarder would be bad for the entire family. But what we should be focusing on is that my kid’s clearly a tracing genius.
I have another confession to make: I don’t always read the directions, which has been a dysfunction that has plagued me since childhood. Comments like “slow down” and “read the directions all the way through” would be scrolled across my little worksheets in elementary school and I’d be like, “No time!” and move right along to not reading the next set of directions. And so, when I saw a worksheet sent home the other day with the letter “P” on it and then some pictures of things that started with “P” and things that didn’t, I was like, “This homework is defective. Lizard doesn’t start with a ‘p.’ Unless they’re looking for a specific kind of lizard? But that seems advanced for pre-k.” And then my husband pointed out that the directions said to circle the pictures of things starting with the letter “P.” Which made more sense, in hindsight.
Anyway.
What’s funny about all of this is, recently, a sponsor reached out to see if I’d be interested in promoting some of their stuff in a post. But since I’ve gotten some sponsor requests that haven’t quite been right, I needed to check them out a bit first. Thankfully, I found their resources useful, so I said, “Sure!” I like that they seem to get that there’s no such thing as “one size fits all” – which, let’s get real, pertains just as much to the parents as it does the kids.
Oh, and I should point out here that, at three, I firmly believe that my kid shouldn’t have homework. And whatever she has sent home to help build her skills should be fun and pressure-free, which thankfully, it is, because their daycare rocks. SHE’S THREE. Let's relax, everyone.
But, as it turns out, I have a child on my hands who asks to do her worksheets – the kid loves to trace, match, and color like a pro. She’s killing it as a preschooler and would like to make that clear to her oblivious parents. So, while she obviously didn’t get her homework DNA from me (hold that thought), we want to encourage her natural curiosity and interest and I decided a few weeks ago to try some of the printables that Education.com sent my way, once we ran out of her daycare worksheets (click here for a free download of one we’ve used recently. If you’re interested in more, check them out here for more resources and printables!)
Also, last night, as I was cooking dinner, Ian was sitting at the table with Rauri after, yet again, asking to do her worksheets from daycare (which thankfully we don’t have to send back because they’d definitely be blank half of the time, and the other half, they’d have food stuck to them). So there they are, tracing the letter “W” and sounding out the words while her sister sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in the living room and I’m feeling like a goddamn Norman Rockwell painting. Which happens so rarely that I really soak it in when it does.
Anyway, they do this for about five minutes and then flip to the next page. After about three more minutes of more of the same, Ian says:
“Ok, now which one is heavier? The wagon or the soccer ball?”
And Rauri, clearly ready to move on from learning and right into dressing up like a princess, says, “I’ll just do eenie-meenie-miney-mo and then I’ll choose that one and be done.”
To which I said, “That’s actually how I used to do most of my homework...so at least we know she’s mine!”
Aaaaaand we’re back, folks!
Thanks for your support, Education.com! We may need it after all.
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