I should have posted this one earlier in the week, but I didn't think of it until my husband posted a link to it on his Facebook page. It's an article written by a Washington Post writer who is the mother of a child at my son's elementary school. It's about our school's Modified Calendar, sometimes called a "year-round" school schedule.
 
Technically, it's not year-round. We're off for summer break next Wednesday, same as all the Alexandria schools with traditional schedules. But our break is shorter than on the traditional schedules; our kids go back to school August 3. We love our calendar! I'll let you read Brigid's reasons why.

(With apologies to those who've already seen this on Bob's Facebook posting.)

"Year-Round School" Article, by Brigid Schulte for the Washington Post, 6/7/2009

A call from the principal's office is never a good thing. This afternoon, the assistant principal at my son's elementary school called to say that my son and several other boys were sitting in his office, having been caught during recess throwing rocks at cars in the parking lot. These are not disgruntled teenagers. These boys are first-graders, all of seven years old.

A car belonging to a fifth-grade teacher was damaged. She's going to get some estimates for repairing the damage, and each boy's family will have to pay an equal share of it. Unfortunately, the car was a BMW, so I imagine it will not be cheap.

I'm mystified. Why do boys do lamebrained things like this? What were they thinking? My son is not home from school yet, but when he arrives, we will have a talk, and probably not a pleasant one.

If anyone out there has been a seven-year-old boy and understands the motivation behind such an act, I would really like to be enlightened.

Brag time. Tonight my son's elementary school hosted a chess tournament for students from three schools. The kids were divided into two divisions, one for kindergarten through second grade and one for third through fifth grade. My little boy was awesome. He was undefeated in every round, culminating in his triumph in the championship game for the younger division. He came home with the first-place trophy and a huge smile on his face.

I haven't played chess since I was a kid, and I don't remember the details of the game well enough to have realized just how good he is at it! I mean, I thought he pretty good for a first-grader. But apparently he's more than pretty good. The tournament organizer was wondering if he should have been put in the division with the kids in grades 3-5.

Tonight, for the second time in the last few days, I dressed up as The Cat In the Hat for Dr. Seuss-related events at my son's elementary school. (I'm the PTA parent in charge of all things library-related.) And we had lots of good fun that was funny.
 
On Friday we celebrated Read Across America Day, timed to coincide with Dr. Seuss's birthday week. The librarian, the Amazing Ms. Griffin, dressed up in her much fancier Cat In the Hat costume, and I put together a makeshift one out of my own closet. (Yes, I did already own a Cat In the Hat red-and-white-striped hat. My mother gave it to me once, though I think she got it from my cousin Ami.) All day long, we entertained the kids, class by class, and with the aid of some other parents and staff, helped them to choose from the hundreds of free books donated by RIF. Every student in the school got a free book that day. It's heart-wrenching, how incredulous some of the kids are when we tell them they can keep these books for their very own, that they don't ever have to return them. It really brings home the fact that some kids - even in one of the best-educated cities in America - don't have any books of their own.

Tonight I donned my Cat In the Hat duds again, this time for the annual Dr. Seuss Pajama Party. The kids and some of the parents showed up in their pajamas, sometimes complete with bathrobes, bedroom slippers, and teddy bears. They looked so cute! We spent a lot of time in family groups, reading to each other. Then Ms. Griffin, also in her Dr. Seuss attire, announced the winners of the Dr. Seuss Rap Contest, and the kids read their raps. My little guy was too busy "working" to sit still and read; he was given the job of passing out stickers to everyone, and he insisted on keeping it up even after the reading started. He takes his stickers very seriously.

Now I've washed off the whiskers, removed my tail, and hung up my Hat. Until next year.

I had no idea how much paperwork it takes to have a kid in kindergarten. Today, with my husband's help, I had to fill out forms to have our little Cutie Pie tested for the Gifted and Talented program. For kindergarten, there are no separate gifted classes, but the gifted specialists work with the teacher to provide extra challenges. It seems rather silly for a 5-year-old, but he's so far ahead in some things - especially math - that I'm afraid he'll get bored and act up if he already knows the lessons. For instance, one of the class goals for math this year is to learn to count to 20, out loud and in writing. By the time he turned 4, he could already count to 2,000. Now he's doing second-grade addition and subtraction, and knows some multiplication. When he was being potty-trained, I used to keep him occupied on the potty by quizzing him on square roots.

Unfortunately, I received the forms only yesterday afternoon, and they had to be turned in by today.