hanging out at the playground during unicycle lessons, i noticed odin’s new haircut ( he requested a “spikey” haircut and even wanted to try out gel?! ) and glasses that he picked out for school make him look all growed up!
he’s getting to be such a big boy. i don’t have to try very hard to look at him and see a teenager. ack!
he only has about a foot to grow before he’s taller than his mother. sigh.
right before we left for vacation we were walking by odin’s school playground and noticed a bunch of kids on unicycles. as it turns out, they’ve been having classes there every wednesday night over the summer and odin definitely thought it was something he’d really, really, really like to learn. and you know what? i’ve always wanted to learn how to unicycle too, so we made a plan to start going to lessons after we got back from vacation.
unfortunately in the few weeks that passed, the instructor of the class left town but some of the kids have decided to keep teaching the classes themselves which is some excellent initiative for kids that aren’t much older than odin.
the first step to learning how to ride a unicycle involves getting used to balancing and pedaling by slowly moving along while holding on to a fence. according to the kids, you’ve graduated from the first level of unicycle training when you can move along two panels of the fence without holding on at all. usually it take about a month of once-a-week practice to gain mastery over the fence.
watching the other kids do bunny hops and ride backwards and forwards is just the right motivation for odin to quickly graduate from holding onto the fence.
what luck! holding hands with poppi is totally within the rules of beginner unicycling 🙂
one day odin will find something that is difficult to learn, but unicycling will apparently not be that thing. after one day of practice he was already close to being able to move along two panels of the fence without holding on. it’s highly doubtful that he’ll need the whole month to graduate from the first level.
his poppi on the other hand, well that’s another story…
maybe one day we can bring the darth vader bagpipe unicycling tradition to viroqua.
odin’s school has a regular “all grade” assembly where the first through eighth classes perform a variety of artistic endeavors in front of the whole school and assembled parents. this week, odin’s class played an orchestrated flute song.
in addition to the general awesomeness of seeing him play orchestrated music, it struck what an ingenious trick the assembly is to get the kids used to thinking that it’s completely normal to play in front of an audience.
it’s such a great confidence builder that will certainly do them well later later in life.
a ukelele and lessons!
odin went to sleep repeating the refrain sung by the entire school in the michaelmas assembly:
When within I conquer fear and doubt / michael in heaven casts the dragon out!
he said he wasn’t afraid in the slightest bit about standing up and singing in front of the whole school and all the parents.
he said simply, “i love that song.” before falling fast asleep.
i love that he was standing next to freya when he was singing the song and came home and probably saw his magnificently metaphorical birthday box with the dragon slaying motif.
talk about myths to live by!
sigh. the day finally arrived. odin’s last day of kindergarten. a bittersweet day to be sure. of course, odin is nothing but excited because not only is it the last day of school, but the Summer Birthday Kids also collectively celebrate their birthdays.
the parents of the Summer Birthday Kids are also excited because they get to have a special morning with the kids where we hang out with them in the play yard before the bell rings and go for the children on their morning walk and watch a special little celebration filled with laugther and songs and stories.
as is quite typical of a waldorf education kindergarten morning at his school, odin begins by climing his favoritest tree!
i’ll bet he’s climbed this tree every day for the past two years ( for those that don’t know, in a waldorf school kids usually don’t start first grade until they are seven, so odin is finishing his second year of kindergarten ).
he’s looking for a caterpillar that he discovered in the tree yesterday and was very eager for us to see it, but alas, the caterpillar had wandered off.
looooooots of running and laughter in the morning. it’s seems like A Proper Way to start the day and i can’t imagine it any other way ( sitting at a desk?! ).
then we went on a walk and watched the children empty their compost into the compost buckets and even got a little tour of the greenhouse where the older kids are growing all sorts of green things for the school garden.
and then it was time to take off the outside shoes and light candles and listen to songs and a wonderful story told by Miss Shannon about birthdays and make music and watch odin walk over a “Rainbow Bridge” laden with silk scarves to mark the passing of The Kindergarten Years ( no cameras allowed for that part 🙂
’twas, indeed, a wonderful morning.
i started the day enjoying a two hour overview of odin’s upcoming first grade walfdorf class pleasant ridge which really, really made we want to go back and re-do first grade myself and we all ended the day watching the eighth grade class perform an adaptation of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” ( every year each grade – the entire grade – puts on a play ).
they did a really great job and imbued the play with tons of heart and humor and we enjoyed it all that much more because we recently read “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. odin thought it was neat to see a bunch of kids he knows sing and act while telling a story.
bookending the day with the two events made me think odin is going to be able to look forward to some fantastically awesome grade school years.