Summatime II

Blog acquaintance, Weese, over at, well, a-hem, "weese," (the name is link) talks about the school year, and how the powers that be like to say that our kids lose a lot of information over the summertime. Her thoughtful essay echoes my own sentiments - that kids may not do much (if any) book learning in their summers, but there is a heck of a lot of other kinds of knowledge soaking up into those brainy sponges.

Already I've seen Megan creating little - well, I don't know what she was creating - but she was creating it quite intensely on the sidewalk in front of the house on Saturday. She gathered up sticks and stones and was building some two-dimensional thing, of her own imagination. Later, she brought in all the items in a box, and then again on Sunday took them out to assemble. I really need to ask that kid just what it is she was doing...

Then there's Katie Rose. She's been lit on fire with the reading bug. She's gone back and re-read a book that she read (at that time much more slowly) about 18 months ago. It took her just a few days this time around. She's thirsting for good books. In addition to that, she's been widening her musical repertoire, and listening to music on her iPod. It makes her happy. It makes her Moms happy. (Note: She is quite aware what loud music can do her to ears - and I've randomly checked and have never found her to be listening to the music at decibels too high for her. OTH, perhaps someone should check how I listen? Heh.)

She has not always explored the computer all that readily, so that when I came home yesterday from work I was surprised to learn that she had ripped an entire CD to iTunes, then transferred it to her iPod. Completely and totally unassisted. Motivation - it's a wonderful state of mind.

Awwwww... My little girl is growing up, and I'm so proud of her.

Summers are exploring, unstructured times. It is a time of strengthening friendships and family ties. It is a wonderful time to connect with parts of our family who live hundreds, even thousands of miles away.

To say that children get behind in the acquisition of knowledge is to be very one-dimensional in the assessment of the knowledge our kids need to be good and decent human beings. As it is, when they are in school, it is incredible the amount of homework they must complete. Speaking for myself, I don't think I had any real homework until sixth grade - and even then there was not all that much, and it certainly wasn't every single night. And sixth grade was still in elementary school; for Katie sixth grade next year will be in middle school.

Ach!

Kids deserve to be kids, to have fun, to be with each other! Gosh, you don't get to be a kid very long. We cannot waste their childhood summers, times that could be the best times of their lives.