More Mundanish Notes

[pantryslut]

1. We are now the owners of a shiny blue minivan, previously owned by my parents. We have christened her Tank Girl.

2. Yesterday I took the kids to a play date with their soon-to-be classmates at Big Frog Park. Then we walked down the trail to Little Frog Park and played pirate and shark for a while, then onto Temescal for ice cream and lunch in that order, plus a stop at the sewing store and the barbershop (for lollipops). Then we walked down to Macarthur, did a little bit of shopping at the beauty supply store, and took the bus home. I like days like this.

3. Speaking of the barbershop, April is (over)due for her first haircut.

4. This morning we took the kids to the monthly East Oakland Playdate at Youth Uprising. We had a gender moment, in which a 5-year-old boy refused to acknowledge Simone's self-definition as a "girl-girl-boy" while his parent admonished, "she is whatever she calls herself." Thank you, supportive parents.

5. I will need to talk about the increasing practice of "redshirting" kindergarten-bound kids soon. Short form: I'm not doing it.

Comments

[badgerbag]

I so hate the redshirting!!!

[pantryslut]

I think it's a particularly intense issue right now locally b/c Oakland is transitioning their kindergarten start date cutoffs -- pushing them back to September 1 I believe, but over the course of two or three years. So there's a whole population of kids with ambiguous starting dates, including mine -- they made the cutoff for their kindergarten year by one day, and if they'd been born a year later they'd have to wait a whole 'nother calendar year to enter school.

But man! I can't imagine *two* more years of preschool for these kids! They would get so bored!

[wild_irises]

I never heard it called "redshirting," but it was standard practice when I was in school. My brother's birthday is January 1, which was the day after the cut-off date, which is why we are 3-1/2 years apart in age and were six years apart in school (I also "skipped a grade," which was fairly common then as well.)

The whole thing also makes me think of Malcolm Gladwell's piece (which I was just talking about last night) on how professional athletes are usually drawn from the group that is oldest when they start school, because they're ahead of the younger kids in the same grade, and the tracking starts then.