Canada Moms Blog

Sign Me Up! School and Volunteerism

My daughter started school this year, and as a mother, this is a whole new ballgame. Where we live, Jr. Kindergarten is ½ day, everyday, so my daughter is out the door by 8:40 am, five mornings a week.

Our kids were never in daycare, so just getting my daughter out the door at a set time every morning sometimes feels like a Herculean effort – one that begins the night before, as I lay out clothes and pack healthy, sugar-free, nut-free, mess-free snacks (Labels! Don’t forget to label everything! Thank goodness for Mabel.) into her little owl backpack.

As a mother, having a school-aged child means staying on top of special pizza days and scientist days and gymnastics days and music days and dance days and holidays and P.A. days and birthdays, and all the little forms and slips and notes and instructions that go along with so many special days that I am left in a daze.

But as a working mother, I realize that all that stuff – all that administrative, organizational stuff – is actually the easy part. The easy part is integrating my daughter into the school system and ensuring that she gets the most out of her experience. The easy part is making sure that she becomes a member of the school community and thoroughly enjoys the little world she will inhabit for the next 7 years. The easy part is making sure she knows what’s going on.

The hard part is making sure that I do.

Jury of Peers

I admit, I am a fearsome mother for a teacher to face. 

As a Mama Bear alone, I am terrifying.

As an Educator myself, with a Bachelors in Elementary Education and a Masters Degree in Child Development (and ever so slowly marching towards my PhD) I am a tsunami of research and knowledge and questions and answers. I AM that frighteningly intelligent college professor they had, the one who was always expecting MORE from them. The one who would send back papers with copious comments and exhort them to THINK, not just write down what they have read.

For those of you who may know me from my home Blog, I am Doing the Best I Can, you may know that I have been engaged in not-so-subtle guerrilla warfare with my daughters teacher. It has been rugged. And I have gotten Mean. Intentionally devastatingly mean. So mean that if I were in this teachers shoes, I would either write me off as a Loon, or be having panic attacks about having to face me.

Of course, like your typical crazy mother, I write letters. However, I write letters filled with educational theory and rationale. I write letters in which your personal and professional competence are seriously being Called OUT by someone with more than a passing knowledge of your profession. When the teacher in question does respond, she passive aggressively writes "cc: Cycle Three Teachers" on her response. Not to be outdone, I amp it up by providing a copy of my response to her response ( copied and included as an attachment for easy reference) in personalized addressed envelopes of each of the teachers in question.

See? I told you I could be mean.

Full-Day-Every-Day Kindergarten is Coming to Ontario

Yesterday, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty named almost 600 elementary schools across Ontario that will be in the first wave to provide a full school day for kindergarten children. It turns out that my children’s school is on the list.

I have been paying particular attention to this issue because my third child, my baby girl, is set to start Junior Kindergarten (JK) this September. I’m really quite pleased with the fact that my child will be in one of the pilot schools. I should add the caveat here that she will be four-and-a-half years old when September hits. If she were born later, I would probably feel less confident about her stamina for coping with that much school. Given her age, and the fact that she is already somewhat used to a structured day thanks to attending preschool three full days a week, I think her transition to all day, every day will be fairly smooth.

Parenting: Yur Doin it Wrong

Time Online recently published a rather LONG article entitled 'The Backlash Against Overparenting.'  The article covers all aspects of our parenting mania and paranoia.  From our 'helicoptering' habits, to our fears about genetically faulty kids, to making sure their lives are tv free, lead free, BPA free, sugar free, etc, etc.

Seriously, it goes on and on and on.

This person had a LOT to say on the subject.

Which is a point in itself.  We do tend to go on and on.

This generation of kids has never been discussed more than any other.   Blogging seem to have started the ball rolling...especially with the development 'mommy blogging.'  We can't NOT stop talking about our kids!

Well, it is really our parenting we are talking about.  A lot.

Cutting the Apron Strings

Earlier this year, I wrote about the next stage of motherhood, the one that I could never see because I was too deep in diapers and potty training and temper tantrums.  At that time I was a bit anxious about the transition.  Those days of anxious anticipation have now passed.  My boys are now both in school.  Dare I say I have adjusted to this new stage?

Isn’t that always the way with motherhood?  It’s really a series of stages, each one presenting its own set of challenges.  Some challenges we know are coming (potty training, everyone’s favourite), and many surprise us out of nowhere (picky eater times two).   All give us ample opportunity to worry, fret, plan, revise plan (anyone have a plan F?) and then we come out the other side with a big sigh of relief (not there on the picky eater thing though, seriously, plan F, anyone?), a few thousand more grey hairs and some sense of pride that we made it through another battle.

Talk Snacky to Me

When I got pregnant with my daughter, I vowed that I’d make all of her baby food. I bought recipe books, a blender and a festive apron, and once she was old enough, I set about the kitchen making homemade applesauce and butternut squash. I was excited about making homemade baby food, and determined, too – I was going to rock this new young mother thing, and I was going to rock it GOOD.

But my darling little girl – the apple of my eye – wanted nothing to do with my homemade baby food. She spit it all over me, as though it was the worst thing she’d ever tasted, and I wiped my dignity my futile efforts off of my flushed cheeks and spooned her some Heinz Starter Peas, which, naturally, she gobbled up in no time flat.

And that’s the way it’s been with her – over the years she’s become quite a picky eater, one who, nine times out of ten, would rather eat processed foods, stuff from the freezer or out of a can, than something homemade. Like her father before her, my daughter’s idea of a fabulous meal would probably be heavy on the carbs – battered, deep-fried carbs, wrapped in more carbs – with a side of trans fats and a smattering of starch for good measure.

Kindergarten Blues

I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm an unbelievably indecisive person. (It really is unbelievable.) Well, now you get to witness it first hand. Last month I pleaded with the "Governmental Powers That Be" to "like, IMPLEMENT" full-day kindergarten. And now I've changed my mind.

WHICH really goes to show that it's true what they say: you really do need to let things sit for a while before you make decisions on them (like that chick-pea curry I made for my extended family the other night, which really was quite good once I let it sit for a bit, marinate...).

Now that I've let it sit for a bit, I realize that half-day Kindergarten is definitely best for my child. In fact, I'm now what they call a staunch supporter of the program because I understand a little more what kindergarten's about, and what's involved and what's at stake. It is not to be entered into casually, too soon or too fast. It is the freaking beginning of The Journey.

No One Said Kindergarten Would Be Easy

My baby has been in Kindergarten a grand total of fourteen days and we've already settled into a routine.  The routine involves the normal things you might expect, breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth and packing a snack before he happily goes off to school.  It also involves me wondering what the day will bring.  Will today be the day?

He is my second son and is very unlike his brother in numerous ways.  On the other hand they have both inherited from me, some of the very traits I would have banned from being passed on, if, you know, God had asked me.  He didn't.  As such, they both have inherited my shyness.  It is beyond difficult to watch them struggle with the very same things I struggled with.  Partly because I understand but partly because I have come out the other side.  If only I could impart the knowledge that I have to them without the painful lessons I had to endure (mostly out of my own stubbornness).

First Day Back at School Ain't What it Used to be

Or is it just me.

I remember from Grade One on (no Kindergarten in the UK), we did an hour or so the first day and then BLAM it was right into full days and that was it.

There was no 'Gradual Entry' for the 5 year olds.  There was no 'wait till we see how many students we have' to set up classrooms.

I keep wondering why schools seem to have a harder time with setting up classrooms now than they did when I was kid!?

What has changed.  Kids come and go.  New students show up.  Old students leave.  Budgets had to be met back then too right?

Pink for Peace

I wrote about this last year here

The second Thursday of the school year in Nova Scotia is known provincially as Stand Up Against Bullying Day. This began in 2007, when a freshman in an Annapolis Valley High School was bullied by  seniors for wearing a pink shirt on the first day of school. Two other seniors took note and decided enough was enough. Pooling their money, they bought fifty cheap pink shirts at a discount store and emailed everyone in the school they could think of, asking them to wear one of the shirts the next day. They figured that they could get twenty to thirty people to wear the shirts, but that twenty was enough to show that they were taking a stand.

The next day, they handed out the shirts - and were astonished to see over 400 other pink shirts worn at their school. There were pink accessories, pink jackets, pink sneakers - even a few pink basketballs on the gym floor that day, all worn to stop bullying.