Month: May 2009

No Standing Ovations Were Necessary, As We Were All Standing Up to Videotape the Thing in the First Place

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Yesterday Jeffrey’s kindergarten class held its end-of-the-year singing concert.  It had a “holidays and birthdays” theme, with little ditties for every month of the year.  My mom, dad, sister, niece, mother-in-law, and grandmother-in-law were all able to come with me, one of the perks of living close to extended family.

Jeffrey got to wear a woefully outdated paper “Indian hat” for the Thanksgiving song — which, strangely, was a jazzy blues number.

For February, they sang a song about George Washington and projected a slide show with individual portraits of all the kids dressed as the man himself.  There are nearly one hundred kindergarteners.  The song had only one verse, so they just kept singing it over and over — about fifty or sixty times.  It was all I could do to refrain from laughing my head off around repeat number 38.

By the halfway point of the concert, Jeffrey grew sleepy — it was the end of the school day, and he had been up late the night before for a family party in honor of my sister’s college graduation — so he kinda stopped singing.  And can you blame him?  The song for Father’s Day was “Wind Beneath My Wings.”  Who teaches a class of kindergarteners “Wind Beneath My Wings”?!?

Towards the end of the concert, Jeffrey simply stood up and began blinking dazedly at the audience.  It was as if he had grown too tired to remain seated.  For July, they sang a peppy pop tune called “America Rocks!”  The kids pumped their fists in the air during the chorus, but Jeff just kinda let his hand flop around. 

He perked up when the concert was finished, though, especially after hearing that punch and cookies were available afterwards in his classroom.  The room was so crowded that Jeffrey was the only one who made it inside, but he got his cookie, digumit!

Word Burst

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Back in mid-January, William began a big vocabulary explosion — the big word burst that usually hits kids around age 2.  It’s still going on; about every other day a new little chirp will pop out of his mouth, and after a few second delay my brain will register it as a real word. 

“Dehdee” became “Teddy.”

“Bibbit” is “ribbit” — for a frog

“Dok, dat, doo” = “sock, hat, shoe.”

“Behffee” is “breakfast.”

One of my favorites: “Dawbee” = strawberry.

He’s learning a language that is understood by only about three people!  Nice!  For a short while, I kept a list of the words he was learning, but I quickly lost track — there were just so many.  One of my English profs in college once told me that the majority of first words English-speaking children learn have Anglo-Saxon roots, and I wanted to see evidence of this.  Just going by casual observation, I guess it’s true, if you aren’t counting words like “banana.”

This week, however, Wimmy came up with “Pok,” his word for “pocket.”

“Pok!” he yelled, sticking his hands in the pouch on the front of his sweatshirt.

“Pok!” he cried, finding a wrinkle in his pants into which he had placed a “dawbee.”

“Pok!” he said after examining my V-neck shirt — and stuffing his hands down its front.

I corrected him quickly on that one.  (Definitely not a pok!)  A few hours afterwards, however, I was taking off his clothes for a bath.  William bent over to examine his bare tummy, especially his bellybutton.

“Pok!” he exclaimed, sticking his finger inside the little dimple.  Well, sure — I guess a bellybutton is a kind of pocket on your belly.  A tummypocket!  I love it!

(And yes, “pocket” is Anglo-Saxon.)

For futher reading:

almost-everything

Almost Everything by Joelle Jolivet.  Word books are kind of a sub-genre of picture books; I don’t know anybody my age who grew up without at least one Richard Scarry “Biggest Word Book Eveh” or somesuch.  Jolivet’s work takes the concept to a stylish new level: bright, jewel-toned woodblock illustrations are packed onto super-oversized (18″ high!) pages.  There are vehicles, flowers, animals, world costumes, houses, foods — well, almost everything.  It’s the kind of book that kids don’t read so much as put on the floor and sprawl over it.  Her first book is called Zoo-Ology and is worth seeking out as well.