All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten!

Amy's first and last day of Kindergarten

Amy has had a WONDERFUL year in Kindergarten. We could not have asked for a better teacher!! "Mrs. Sue" Jones has known exactly what Amy needed, and was able to encourage her and challenge her every day. It is very obvious that Mrs. Sue LOVES teaching kindergarten, and she LOVES the children.
Amy loves to learn, and works hard to please Mrs. Sue. Not only has she become a great reader, but, like Robert Fulghum says, All she really needs to know she has learned in Kindergarten. Every day she was in a fun, nurturing, loving environment that allowed her to learn and develop at her own pace. What more could we want? I guess we just want 1st Grade to be that great too! If only we could take Mrs. Sue on to be Amy's teacher next year...

Although Amy missed the Kindergarten graduation,

she certainly didn't miss out on hugs from her teacher!

I painted plant pots like these for Natalie, Jordan

and Ryan's teachers...back in the day...

In fact, one of the girls teachers even commented to

me last week that she still has the pot on her desk!

So, after that comment, I decided to start a new

round of painting pots for Amy's teachers. Sure

enough, they all loved them. :)

We filled the pots with a loaf of poppyseed bread.

"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.

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So, there ya have it. Like I said, Amy learned a lot this year in Kindergarten!!