Before You School

Math readiness and reading readiness can be learned when your child reaches certain developmental stages. Fortunately, these skills can be tried and practiced for months or even years before school begins. Gaining certain flags of readiness is not only relevant and required but fun for you and your toddler or preschooler.

At approximately 10 months of age, your child will be attempting the pincer grasp. Thumb touching index finger is the main sign to watch for. Then you can give your child dry macaroni, or pieces of cereal (pay attention to watch for choking) or small cubes of cheese to strengthen the ability to grasp small objects with the thumb and idex finger.

Until your child is comfortable doing this maneuver you shouldn't expect anything with a writing utensil to be more than scribbles. Once he or she can hold a crayon or thick pencil with the pincer grasp, it is possible that the child can draw lines deliberately, if you show her how. No one is born knowing what "line" means so you must demonstrate. It is rarely advisable to hold the child's hand in place. This is uncomfortable and disempowering. If your child shows an interest in writing but can't hold a writing utensil then have them trace lines with their finger or follow the path a presented line makes with a token or finger.

Playing simple board games can give your child practice following a path or a line. When their little nervous system is ready to skillfully use his finger then the child is ready to follow lines. Watch for signs of stress and change the activity if the child exhibits stress, for example by furrowing her brow, grunting, excessive blinking, body restlessness, inattention, or extra wiggling.

Tracing or drawing a line is often mastered within a month. After this, you might move on to circles, wavy lines, or a combination. Imagine your child takes a kindergarten entrance exam and the first task is to circle the picture that begins with the letter p. Does your child know what it means to encircle something? Test instructions are specifically checking for certain skills. Your child may know the answer yet not have the understanding of the instructions.

Once a child can encircle a picture, have them practice this skill in other ways. Use yarn to encircle miniature farm animals, for instance. Trace around other items. For whole body reinforcement, you might let them experiment with a hoola hoop, or play musical chairs.

Next your child will be ready to create sets with small objects. This is the beginning of math readiness. Counting out loud is great, too. Basic patterns in learning must be taught as well. The primary objective of learning patterns is to enforce the idea that there is order in the child's world and the power to organize that chaos is in her hands.

Standing in line. Sorting by color or shape. Determining small, big, or bigger. Reading from left to write. The order we impose on our environment makes it more manageable, less stressful, and easier to learn. Even before the child knows left and right, she can practice sequencing, another readiness skill. What happens first? What happens next? What happens last? Ask your child these measurement questions frequently and with ease. Which block is the biggest? Which block is on the top or bottom? Proportion and context are organizational tools, too.

If you're chomping at the bit to teach your little one, these and more readiness skills can and should be learned, practiced for months, and perfected from before your child turns one until school. Readiness. Fun, engaging, and on point.

To Member Again

I believe to remember means “to member again,” as in to make us whole when we have been dismembered; separated from our original beauty. Before my father lost a leg to diabetes I was paying my little brother 50 cents an hour to let me teach him things, things that brought me joy. But in order to teach beauty, I must re member my own. This is a gift my father has given me.
Last Christmas I was visiting the folks. Bored with all the television specials, my father was in the living room manning the flipper. All the Von Trapps were in line; the Boston Pops were straining to tune; Charlie Brown’s brave little tree was leaning precariously; where is the Bonanza Christmas Reunion when a man needs it? One might well ask.

Suddenly my father began frantically calling my name; he has fallen, I feared, as I rushed into the living room to assist him. I found him serenely sitting in front of the television, which he sees with only tunnel vision in his good eye. “What is it?” I asked respectfully. “I found this on TV,” and he gestured toward the blurred images of Klara and the sugar plum fairies. “Yes,” I answered; “would you like to watch The Nutcracker?” “No,” he responded with some irritation, “but I thought you might.”

Of course, I had seen it before. And I thought I remembered it well. As I began to explain to him that I had seen it, both live and on television, he interrupted me with, “but weren’t you in it?” Our conversation continued, but my mind was elsewhere. I am hardly a ballerina, but I was not concerned that my dad’s lucidity was failing. I had realized that when my father hears beautiful music, he thinks of me. When he hears the beauty of the familiar, he does not think, “Tchaikovsky” or “Handel” or “Mozart”; he thinks to himself, “Belinda.” I have taught him this beauty because I embody beauty. I embody the beauty of music and literature because I do not easily forget it; it is membered in me, and can’t be detached like my father’s leg.

The pull of gravity allows us to member and member, and member again until we are whole and beyond whole; we are capable of making others whole. The more vulnerable we are, the more beautiful we become. Do more than simply remember lovely times and cherished moments. Embody them, and know you are beautiful. This way, you will survive earthly loss. You will thrive, and so will the people who see you as membered and whole, those who come to you for sustenance. Offer yourself freely.
The people for whom your life has been a ballet deserve nothing less.

Because I (Beer) Can

When I was 6 years old, boys often followed me home from school.  I think I fascinated them because, while I was not a tomboy, I did things that they never saw girls of the 60s do.  Or maybe it was because the beer was always on me.

My dad introduced me at a young age.  I played in the mud; danced in the rain; squatted down in my dress to play marbles.  I filtered pond scum through my hands to catch tadpoles.  I tied bacon to a string and let it down crawdad holes; could pull up an ole crawdaddy almost every time.  I knotted thread around the body of a Junebug and let the insect fly high into the air.  I took these Junebugs for walks.  I would walk along holding the spool of thread, giving the Junebug slack enough to fly about 20 feet above my head; then I could reel him back in if he misbehaved.  I never owned a pair of overalls; I did all of these things in cotton summer dresses.

I walked home from school in 1st grade.  One day I was late coming home so my mom loaded Clayton into the stroller and went to look for me.  We spotted each other when we were about a block apart.  I yelled, “mama, mama” and began running toward her with what she thought was a can of soda.   Seven or eight boys began running after me.  I wasn’t holding a can of soda.  It was a beer can.

I’m sure it must have looked to my mom as though I were on the road to a life of crime.  Wet and muddy as Caddy Compson, barefoot because I had taken off my shoes to avoid getting in trouble for dirtying them, I was headed straight for hell with a beer can in my hand and with boys in hot pursuit.  My side of the story?

On my way home from school I bragged to the boys that I knew how to catch tadpoles and turn them into frogs (as good as kissing a frog and turning it into a prince, to my mind).  They didn’t believe me, so when I saw a cul de sac full of thick, stagnant water I stopped there.  After taking off my shoes and socks, I entered, letting the cold mud ooze between my toes.  The boys stood back and watched.  The plump black dots wiggled around my toes—eureka!  “Get me something to put them in,” I shouted; the boys found an empty beer can and I began scooping until the can I did not recognize as an intoxicating beverage container was full to the brim.  Triumphantly, I continued home to show the boys how to nurture the ebony wigglers into full-fledged frogs that would eventually jump out of a pickle jar of water and hide under our family washing machine where it was likely a little moist.

I often wonder what became of the boys.