Lessons from Kindergarten

I was getting ready for class yesterday afternoon, while Benjamin sat at the counter and ate his snack. Ben watched me as I cut an apple into slices, and peeled a clementine. Since my class goes over the dinner-hour, I always bring a snack to calm my rumbling stomach. As I put my fruit into a container, Ben asked:

“Mommy, how come you have to bring a snack to your class every time?”

"Well, because I get hungry, and I like to have a snack to eat during my break,” I replied.

Clearly I misunderstood the question, because Benjamin immediately shook his head at me and said, “No Mommy. How come you bring a snack every time? How come you don’t take turns bringing snacks?”

Oh, now I understood. In Benjamin’s kindergarten class, each child takes a turn bringing in snack each day. A treat calendar is sent home every month. Last week, Benjamin brought in cheese crackers, pretzels and Teddy Grahams. He wanted his classmates to have a lot of choice.  

“Um, it’s a little different in university sweetie. Everyone brings their own snack.”

“Oh,” Ben was clearly unimpressed, but I had a solution.

“I baked some chocolate-chip cookies today. How about if I bring some of those to share?”

Ben agreed that this was a good idea, so I packaged up the cookies in aluminum foil to bring with me to class.

Benjamin wasn’t finished though, “Mommy do you have a job in your class?”

“Well….my job is to study and listen and work hard to learn.” Do you hear the subliminal message?!

“Nooooo Mommy!” I was batting two-for-two during this conversation. “I mean a job like line-leader or paper-passer or hallway monitor?” Forget working hard, these are the jobs that are important to a kindergartener!

“Ummm, sorry kid. No jobs like that in my class.”

Benjamin regarded me with a look of disappointment. Clearly, my class was not cutting it, in his opinion. Maybe I should mention to my professor that next semester she needs to give out a snack roster, and consider doling out jobs. I’d make a great paper-passer!

My conversation with Benjamin made me think of the poem below. I know that we’ve all seen it before, but being mommy to a kindergartener makes me realize just how true it is.

xo Naomi

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

By Robert Fulghum

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Adapted from: http://www.peace.ca/kindergarten.htm