My daughter seems to be well-adjusted now. A month ago, she didn’t want to go to school. When we were out shopping for uniforms, she refused to try the ones I had picked out for her. She whined that she misses her bestfriend, Catalina. She wanted to stay in preschool with her friends and her beloved teacher, Ms. Ana. No amount of explanation could ease her anxiety.

I started to worry. I had thought that adjusting to kindergarten would be a breeze for her. Afterall, she’s used to the school setting. She’s comfortable with other kids. She’s mastered her alphabet, colors, and shapes. She can count up to 100, write her name, spell and recognize some words. I didn’t understand why, just a few days before the start of classes, she acted skittish whenever I mentioned anything related to kindergarten.

So I hunted all over the house for a book that I had bought two years ago. I didn’t think she’d need it anymore after I saw how excellent she was doing in preschool. How could I have forgotten that it is but natural for anybody to feel anxious whenever there’s a big change coming up? New place. New faces. New routines. I should have prepared her emotionally.

I called her to come sit beside me on the couch. Together we examined “The Night Before Kindergarten” by Julie Durrell and Natasha Wing. I read it aloud. Hmmmm. It rhymed and sounded like the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas”. That’s a plus. My daughter is a little Dr. Seuss, fond of creating rhyming gibberish. With the help of the book I assured her that, in some ways, kindergarten is just like preschool. I pointed at the pictures that showed  what they might do and what she may see in the classroom. What caught her attention the most was the line “visions of school supplies danced in their heads”. One by one she identified them on the page. I seized that spark of interest and declared that we should start gathering the coolest stuff we could find for school. She ran to her pencil holder and pulled out some pink pencils. We sharpened them up until their tips felt like bee stings against our skin. She picked out a pineapple eraser from her eraser collection. She agonized over whether she should get her dad to buy her the sparkly pink backpack or the Disney Princesses one. The princesses won. We went on a trip to the dollar store to get her a pencil box. I kept reminding her that the small box will not hold all her crayons, markers, pencils, and colored pencils. While rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, she explained   that she needed to pack some snacks for recess.  After she found some crackers, she positioned her backpack the by door, just like in the book, all set for the first day of school.

]]> http://chiquibaylon.net/2011/09/starting-kindergarten/feed/ 6 http://chiquibaylon.net/2008/07/learning-to-count/ http://chiquibaylon.net/2008/07/learning-to-count/#comments Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:36:25 +0000 Chiqui http://chiquibaylon.net/?p=38  

My two-year-old never ceases to amaze me. I was picking up some scattered toys when I heard her counting from one to ten all by herself.  Moments like this can fill a mother’s heart with so much happiness.  So I’m marking down July 24, 2008 as a day when my baby reached another milestone in her life.

I’ve been teaching her to count since she was a year old. We would count whenever we’d go up and down the stairs or whenever we put away the toys and stuff that she’d mess up in the living room.  The best that she could say was “two, tee, two, tee” (two, three, two, three). Last month she liked to say “eat, nigh, eat, nigh” (eight, nine,eight,nine) everytime she got hold of the phone.  

All kinds of success can be attributed to something. In this case, I think, her being in preschool has reinforced her learning.  And to think that she started going to school only two weeks ago.  

For two months now she’s been fascinated with Oswald, an octopus cartoon character on the Noggin/Nick Jr. channel.  I can’t understand why she loves it.  The program is very dry and unexciting. I guess because it’s supposed to be an educational show for preschoolers. She has this book, that I bought at the 99 Cent Store, entitled “Counting with Oswald” by  Phoebe Beinstein and illustrated by Etsu Kahata. Before going to bed she’d always look for it saying, “Osald, whey aah you?   Whey aah you, Osald?”.  When she finds it, she’d hand it over to me to read.  We’ve been doing this for about two months. I can memorize the book from cover to cover.   I’m sick of it actually. But now that my baby can count on her own, I suppose I owe you my thanks, Oswald.