The boys went back to school on Monday after a good
winter break. TR was ready to go back,
QT was reluctant, and I was definitely not ready for my boys to go back to
school! TR is our social butterfly, he
lives for recess and being with his friends.
I worry about QT. As excited as
he was for kindergarten, formal school hasn’t been his thing so far. Most days moving cows in a blizzard sounds
like a better idea to him than going to school.
As for me, I prefer having my boys’ home with me. I spend most of my afternoon counting down the
minutes until they come home. It is
pretty quiet around our house without my wild little boys.
That first day back, QT and I were waiting outside the
school for his teacher to come and collect him and his classmates. I felt like we had done a pretty good job
keeping up with where his teacher left off for the break, and really wasn’t too
worried about him forgetting anything he had learned in school up until
now. I was listening to other parents
talk with each other about what school work they did with their kids over the
break. Those parents were busy! They
were working on their letters, numbers, and coloring all break long.
Other than bedtime stories, we never cracked a book
all vacation. While QT’s classmates were
watching cartoons, he was sledding behind the feed wagon. While other kindergartners were practicing writing
their numbers to 30, QT was counting cows to 50 on the feed ground. While they were practicing their letters and
sounds, QT was recognizing his cow’s name on her ear tag and reading animal
tracks, or looking for “M” words like muskrat, mountain, and mud. We hunted coyotes, set traps, shot our bb
guns, and explored a good part of our big backyard.
QT may write his 3’s backwards, or not always color
inside the lines and we need to work on that, but he can find his way home from
anywhere within a 5 mile radius of the house, can tell the difference between
most of our cows and tell you their names (better than I can anyway!), and tell
you the difference between a coyote’s and raccoon’s tracks. Listening to these parents made me think
about my teaching choices over the break.
Should I have spent more time working on more
traditional school type activities? Maybe,
but at this point I feel that having a son who is aware of his surroundings and
has the tools to navigate this world is just as important as being able to color
inside the lines. Education is
important, but I want him to experience life from the outside, not based on
what he sees on a video game or reads about in a book about someone else’s
experiences. I want him to know how to
work, get outside, get dirty, and play.
Let’s face it. He’s only going to
be little once, and he will have plenty of time later to write a book for
someone else to read about growing up on a cattle ranch in northern Nevada.
