Posts tagged as:

education

Flinch!

September 12, 2009

Rio starts kindergarten on Monday. I’ve already told the story of our decision to send her to school here and on Babble. I’ve been alternately praised for listening to my daughter and castigated for my failures as a mom. Today I want to talk about what happened during that now-famous conversation when she asked me [...]

Tagged as: education, flinch, homeschooling, kindergarten, rio, schooling, starting kindergarten, starting school

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Shopping: the sacred back-to-school rite

September 5, 2009

My mother came over the other day. I’d asked her to come by and help us sort through Rio’s wardrobe, get her room set up for kindergarten and make a list with us of morning and evening routines to support school success. When she arrived, Rio asked her to take us to Target and buy [...]

Tagged as: education, family of origin, frugality, money, parenting, rio

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The long pause in learning

July 26, 2009

A few months ago, Rio seemed to be right on the cusp of learning to read. She was practicing writing every day, for hours. She began copying whole sentences out of books, writing out words like “amazing” along with her standards – Rio, Mama, love. And then she stopped. I wasn’t surprised. She’s done this [...]

Tagged as: education, reading, rio

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In praise of simple toys

July 14, 2009

Dr. Rio is performing surgery. She has a pencil, a rubber band, a kitchen apron and the laser-like focus of a professional deep in her work. “Hold still, Mama!” she says. “This is very important.” Of course, her medical career is just one aspect of her life. My young doctor is also an artist, a [...]

Tagged as: education, parenting, play

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Extraterrestrial Circus Experiment this Friday

July 8, 2009

Two of my kids are participating in Somerville’s Open Air Circus this summer, a local circus produced by and for kids. My teenage stepson is taking a leadership intensive and teaching classes in everything from unicycling to juggling, while the five-year-old in my life has become an instant expert at balance beams, tumbling and running [...]

Tagged as: circus, education, ian, rio

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Kindergarten, here we come

June 8, 2009

Sitting at the table one day, about ten days ago, Rio and I were doing a math project. She seemed to have come to the end of her interest in it. It was a simple game with paper, pen and a box of smooth round stones. (In spite of everything I am about to say, [...]

Tagged as: education, eliot-pearson, homeschooling, rio, school, tufts

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Alphabetical Objects

May 30, 2009

I ran across this page of interesting alphabets the other day. It’s not exactly for kids. One of the alphabets was made by clothespinning flesh into letter shapes. I personally do not want to put that idea in my five-year-old’s head. But a lot of the alphabets are charming, and very kid friendly. There are [...]

Tagged as: art, education

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Talking to kids about sex

May 29, 2009

If you’re at all like me, you don’t enjoy talking to kids about sex. I love talking to kids, and I love talking about sex, but the two together can get pretty awkward pretty fast. With my little ones, this is mostly “funny” awkward. It’s my four-year-old asking every adult who sets foot in the [...]

Tagged as: education, sex

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school update

February 4, 2009

So Rio and her dad went to the kindergarten open house at our neighborhood school. I would have gone, but the baby fell asleep at an inconvenient time, and we are strict followers of the “Never Wake A Sleeping Baby” school of parenting. Rio came home from the open house literally vibrating with excitement. “Mama! [...]

Tagged as: education

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more thoughts about school

January 16, 2009

A little research proves that we live two blocks away from the best elementary school in Somerville. Everyone in the neighborhood raves about it, their test scores are on par with Arlington’s elementary schools, they go all the way up through 6th grade and their school theme is “Global Education”, which they say means organizing [...]