Friday 11 May 2012: C is for cat...

805/365: ... y'know... I'm thinking that these two don't really get on.

On the left - our Poppy. 2 years old. Tabby. Female.

On the right - a neighbourhood cat. Age unknown. Tabby. Male.

Here, Poppy is demonstrate the strangle-hold death grip. Well, what do you expect when a boy cat wears a sparkly collar. The shame of it. Poppy had to do something about it, don't you know?

Enough waffly twaddle. Today's been a 'working from home' day. So, got lots of writing etc done, put together a very last minute presentation (asked this afternoon if I could do a presentation for Monday afternoon... *gulp*) and generally got on with stuff.

Surrounding 'getting on with stuff' was family stuff. Namely going to a parents meeting with Felix's teacher. Now, Steiner parent teacher meetings are not the same as other schools. Not that I have any experience of an alternative, but I'm pretty sure that they don't last for well over an hour (normal parents' evenings at the school can last for over two hours and involve games and painting!). And I'm pretty sure they're not a generally mellow affair either. Anyway, this was seriously mellow. Felix is doing fine. He's six and they're just on the verge of doing any vaguely formal learning.

For anyone who's interested (skip this bit if you're not!)... at Steiner schools, they don't do any reading or writing stuff until they're around 7 - but when they start to, it sure looks fun. For example, they do a letter at a time, each over several days... and what happens is that an exciting story is told and the letter emerges from the story. So... a story about mountains is told... they then draw a picture of the mountains... and they spot the letter 'M' in the shape of the hills. They play games about each letter... draw it large on the carpet and walk it out. It's all physical and 'real', if you see what I mean. The letter 'W' appears from drawing pictures of waves after a story about a boat bobbing around in rough seas. They find the letter 'C' in the shape of a curled cat's tail etc etc. They know them on a really deep level in the end, without even consciously trying - I remember hearing one little girl describe it as 'knowing the letters like friends'.

Anyway, that's done so gradually the children don't even really notice until the point where... it's hard to describe... but it's as if a switch is flicked and they suddenly 'get' reading. With Maddy I remember the day the children came home from school with reading books for the first time and all of the parents were turning to each other and going 'did you know they could read yet?' - and they could. Then, while I was waiting to pick up Felix, Maddy just lay down in the corridor and started reading. Moments later, another little boy did the same - they were just so enjoying reading they wanted to do it any old place... even with people stepping over them (and no one asked them to move!) they read on.

So... anyway... Felix is starting all of that and really enjoying it. I heard some woman on the radio the other day saying that if children haven't learned to write by the time they're 7 then essentially they'll never really write fluently. Twaddle! I'm relieved that our two have a pressure-free environment in which to love learning and growing. No marks, SATS, assessments, standards, grades, uniforms, homework (no computers even!)... or any of that stuff. Shocking. ;o)

Occasionally we'll get comments from people who think our children are kinda stoopid for not being able to read when they're 6/7. 'They'll get it eventually', 'my x was a slow reader too', 'my x just couldn't have waited', 'some children (i.e. yours!) just take longer', 'I'm sure they have their own special talents' - are all comments we've had. But they don't understand that it's not that they're 'slow' at it, it's just not on the agenda... yet. It's like me implying their kid is slow for not speaking in Swahili when they've never been exposed to it in any shape or form. 'They'll get it eventually', I'll say, nodding slowly when I've asked them how their child's Swahili is coming along, 'I wouldn't worry... they have their own 'special' talents'...

Oh, and if you skipped to the bit where it wasn't me talking about school stuff...

... I'm about to leave you disappointed. There's nowt else.

Move along... move along...

PS I now declare it...
PPS... the weekend!!!

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