Roots, Day #1 or Letting My Baby Be A Teaching Tool

Roots of Empathy is a book by Mary Gordan in which she talks about creating empathy in young children. Somehow, I am now participating in this program with my son. You can read more about it here. (If you do, you’ll probably know more about it than me. My children never let me get around to reading all the literature given to me.) Every three weeks or so, starting November 2nd until around the end of May, I will be bringing my son into a kindergarten class so that the children there can visit with him, ask questions and learn about his development.

I don’t know if I didn’t pay enough attention when this was explained to me or I was too busy try to soothe my infant while keeping track of my toddler or what was going on with me. I thought there was going to be at least one other mother in the class.  Nope, just me. Well I’m committed now and I thought that since this is based on a book and an interesting program so far, that I would write a little blog entry after each class.

This first class was basically a welcome class. The kids sang a welcome song to my son, it was super cute.  Then they sat in a circle so they could look at him and ask me questions. Much of this was practiced the week before. They asked what he could do and couldn’t do at his age (almost 4 months). We (the instructor and I) measured him, so they could see how much he grows from visit to visit. They wanted to know what he ate. It was a lot of talking and trying to sift through all of it to give them answers. Kindergarteners are crazy! Many of them are hyper and want to know everything and ask you the same questions ten different ways. I was only there for about forty minutes, but so much happened. Even in that time, I could tell which kids where the more outgoing ones and which ones were more shy. They all seem interested and enjoyed having the baby there. They even have a picture of him up in there class! It was cute and kind of fun. I’m looking forward to the next class.


(I know this isn't a ton of information, but it's all I have time for today.)