I happen to think that I have one of the cutest kindergartners on the planet living at my house. Here he is with his scooter. He spends hours on that scooter. He tries to keep up with his older siblings on their roller blades, but scooters are hard to get to go as fast as roller blades. But he’s mighty cute with that scooter anyway.
I’m quite proud of my little kindergartner. He just loves life and loves learning. And he’s learned so much over the last few months. One of those things was how to ride his bike. One of my education theories happens to be that kids should learn to ride bikes before they learn to read. I know, that’s just an opinion, but it’s a good one.
Here is a video of him riding.
He got a bit frustrated with me for procrastinating in taking his training wheels off. I kept saying, “I’ll get to it, when I get time.” (That’s a bad thing to say to kids.) Then his 8 year-old brother gave up on me too and went and took them off. So this video is the first time I even saw him try without his training wheels. According to the big brother and sister, he didn’t even fall over once, he just started riding. He was a very happy boy that day, as you can see in the video.
He also lost his first and second tooth this fall. That’s also an important event. (Although, I don’t try to make that happen before my kids start learning to read.)
We have so much fun together learning. I think kindergarten is my favorite time to teach. I don’t feel any pressure, because I think kindergarten was an invented grade just to take kids away from their parents earlier. But it is also such a fun time, because the lightbulbs are turning on. G’tums loves to add and count and draw and paint and especially loves to learn about nature. I haven’t started him on reading yet, although when you’re a third child, sometimes the older siblings step in where mother isn’t. So his big brother has been teaching him letter sounds. It works well, gets those phonics more rooted in my third grader’s mind.
I just have to share one of my favorite quotes from a book that I have read multiple times. “Mothers, let the little ones play in the open air; let them listen to the songs of the birds and learn the love of God as expressed in His beautiful works. Teach them simple lessons from the book of nature and the things about them; and as their minds expand, lessons from books may be added and firmly fixed in their memory.” Ellen White, Child Guidance, p. 34