Kindergarten

I went to the school yesterday to help in my granddaughters' classrooms.  Rowan is in 3rd grade.  They talked about counting change; piece of cake.  I could handle that.

Then I went to Rhiannon's class.  I was in charge of her center, helping her and other children write numbers.  You know, it's very confusing to know what is the correct way to teach a child to write "2" and "5" not to mention, the teacher instructed me so quickly, I was a bit mystified about the graph the kids were supposed to fill in using dice.  And Rhiannon wasn't having my help on this day.  She kept mixing up 2 and 5 and arguing with me about it.  As I looked around the room, another mother helped in one corner, the teacher was at a different table and at another table, kids had on earphones and were laughing and turning pages of a book quickly as chimes rang out. 

The teacher suddenly got up and turned on music and everybody seemed to know what to do except me.  Rhiannon, age 5, knew where to put her things and exactly what to do.  I was thinking, "what a good teacher to have taught them this routine so quickly."

And I was also thinking "even Kindergarten's too complicated for me."