The 4 year old starts Pre-K this year. In our public school district, Pre-K is free and lasts half the day, much like Kindergarten in days gone by. This is because Pre-K is the new Kindergarten. Kindergarten is the new First Grade. First is the new Second, and after that you’d better be ready to take the SAT’s, kid, cause it’s about that time. Hopefully somewhere in there you find time to learn to tie your shoes.
Actually? When I was in Kindergarten I was the dead-last kid to learn to tie my shoes. This was humiliating. Nowadays, motor skills like these develop later. I presume this because it is not a standard skill among my first graders. I have even had 8 year olds asking me to tie their shoes. Spoiler: I did not. Now ask me if my 7 1/2 year-old is all that good at it…
This past summer I ran across a great blog post from the blog A Magical Childhood, and loved it. “What Should a 4 Year Old Know” was a calming reminder that, though my little one is not reading or writing like my big one was at this age, there are far more important things than a knowledge of the two sounds “G” makes. I will admit to buying a Pre-K workbook for us to use when we ‘played school’ in the summer. We cracked it once. Again, we had stuff to do.
Related, I swear, is this gorgeous little book:
Meg’s World (On Amazon here). Written by author/illustrator John Kollock and originally published by Peachtree Publishers in 1970, I have loved this book, I think, forever. Yes I know it’s older than I am.
In it, 4 year-old Meg explains her week to someone, including the family schedule, and other fun happenings in between. One such event is having company over: “Company does not always want to play what you want them to. Last week I wanted to play gorilla, but Mary wanted to be a fairy tale. You can’t always have your own way, even if you yell. We get the costumes from the big box at the foot of my bed. When you play “dress-up” the company always gets to be the princess or the fairy. This is called manners. I get to be the boy – or the gorilla, when they will play it. After “dress-up” we get out some more toys. Sometimes we remember to put-each-thing-back-in-its-place-when-we-have-finished-playing-with-it.
Sometimes we forget.”
It goes on like that, and gets better. As a former player of He-Man and Ninja Turtles, I totally related to the gorilla thing. In her eyes, Meg stays home each day, not because she’s too young to go to school, but to help her mother with the housework. This mainly consists of trying to vacuum up the cat. There is nothing regular on her family calendar for Wednesdays, so she’s doubts aloud that there is one every week. Mother likes washing dishes so much, that she does them again when Meg is finished her turn. And then there’s this:
Pardon the orange marker stain. Everything in my house has a marker stain.
She is awesome, this kid. I’m so proud that we share a name. If any 4 year-old is ever this simultaneously carefree and opinionated, their mom and dad can be satisfied with their parenting work thus far. This is the kind of kid that the above blog post is talking about. Secure, creative, and unburdened by, as Kollock puts it in his beautiful little introduction, “the learning process – the discipline of facts – A+ and D-.”
In a high school literature class we were asked to bring in our favorite book. Not trying to be cutesy, but rather to start a discussion on narrative voice and perspective, I unwittingly brought along Meg. Yes, I was 18. I stand by my decision.
Nowadays, as a teacher and parent, I would love to bring it somewhere again, as another type of example.
Because I got your ‘4 Year-Old Curriculum’, right here:
My memory may be failing me in my old age, but I swear to God the person who sat next to me in that lit class brought in Atlas Shrugged.
I think I’d pay them each to go try it…