



I have a sweet, cuddly, lovable little five year old who started his very first day of kindergarten today. The day snuck up on me, like everything does, when before my very eyes, my children grow and change and hit milestones long before I realize they are ready.
Jude was an eager little pupil, somewhat curious about what the day would hold, slightly humored at the excitement of those around him when they asked him if he was excited about his first day of school. "Should I be?" his eyes seemed to ask with mild amusement.
Let me just say here that I packed twice the schoolbooks for Jude than what I packed for the older kids. Kindergarten curriculum never seems to suffer from quantity; over the years I have realized it's the quality that often seems to be lacking. This year I decided to go with Veritas Press Phonics Museum. So you know, we don't follow classical education, which Veritas is known for, however, upon having tried many different kindergarten phonics programs, I was curious to try Veritas. I thought the songs, book suggestions, and and workbook looked like something Jude would enjoy.
The flash cards are beautiful: each letter of the alphabet is illustrated by a famous painting. A, for apple (duh), is some famous painting of an apple, that I am not classically educated enough to know the name of, nor the artist. I guess my five year old and I will learn about this together. Anyway, we read a book today about the alphabet, learned a fun alphabet song, practiced tracing lines and circles (I like this aspect of the workbook so far) and colored a suit of armor. Bad mommy; I forgot to make sure I had crayons on hand and the suit of armor had to be one color only: graphite, since the only coloring utensil we had on hand was a pencil. Jude and I looked at 26 famous paintings that all represented a letter of the alphabet. D-d-dancer is illustrated by a painting of a ballerina by Degas. So, at least on the teaching end, this is certainly more entertaining to go through than many other programs I have looked through, and tried. I have yet to see if it proves more efficient, and effective than the simple Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, a book I brought along as a back up, just in case. I can promise Veritas will be more interesting.
For math, Jude is beginning Saxon 1. You guys, I love Saxon math. I love it so much. It's magical. I know some people hate it. The thing with Saxon is that it doesn't pretend to be anything but a math book. It's not fancy. It's not innovative. But it teaches mathematical concepts, beginning with the very easiest ideas, and builds up from there, one small idea at a time ("incremental development" is Saxon's byline), and, just as Isaiah 10:28 says, " for precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little," you can see that even the Bible endorses Saxon's teaching philosophy. You can't get a higher authority than that. And I'm only half joking when I say this. My kids go through love and hate phases with math. And who doesn't? Math is very hard work. And hard work, while extremely rewarding, is not necessarily always fun. There's really no getting around that. So, they sometimes suffer through math, sometimes flourish, and always test very well. Today Jude learned what a calendar was and wrote a 1 in his Meeting book to designate day one of school. We also counted to 30. We were supposed to discuss what mathematicians are and do. I elected to skip that conversation just then. I'm sure we can talk about it another day.
Jude and I looked at a map and learned a song about the capitals and countries of Scandinavia. I love the cd of geography songsI own. I'm determined for the kids and I to learn all of them this year. I can't remember what that curriculum is called, but just google "geography songs" and you'll find it.
Finally, I showed Jude how to find all the twins and triplets (black notes) on the piano, and had him practicing playing one note four times in a row, then holding it down while counting to two. Jude will probably start piano lessons next summer or sometime around then, and I want to show him a few of musical concepts before he starts that.
That was Jude's first day of kindergarten. While all this was going on, the four older kids practiced piano, picked up where they had left off in their math lessons last June, did spelling tests, looked at maps, journaled, listened to poetry, and read. I managed to check in from time to time and make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to. Also, I threw together spaghetti for dinner, kept Clementine relatively happy, and helped Truman "color" (with graphite). Our school year got off to an impressive start.
Of course I don't expect every day to go this smoothly. I know it won't; life is busy, complicated, and things so very often don't go as planned. That's okay. I'm going to keep Saxon's model in mind as I go forward in the school year, that of incremental development. Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little there a little. Oh right, that's not just Saxon; it's also in the Bible. Just remembering that every single day, putting in just a little bit of effort, not giving up, not quitting and steadily staying faithful to the task at hand is all that God is asking me to do.