Tonight I went to a curriculum (Ministry of Ontario Kindergarten document in PDF format) night at Elina’s school. An evening of meet the teacher, see the school. I sat in Elina’s little chair and got to hear a little bit about the the children are doing now. How they are adjusting, what we can expect. It bought to mind a little poem about kindergarten. Elina’s exactly where she has to be, doing exactly what she needs to do and learning exactly what she has to be learning.

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 sandpile at the school yard.

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 into 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.

Robert Fulghum

P.S. Did you know I skipped kindergarten – I knew something was wrong with my childhood!!!!