"Mama, is there school today?"

This is what I've been hearing multiple times a day since I've been home on maternity leave with our new son, Dmitri. What's interesting is what she means by it. Lately, we have been spending much of our days in imaginary play revolving around being in a school. This was all Elena's doing. She insisted that I ask the students to raise their hands in order to talk, for example. She calls me "teacher" and loves it when I call her "student" and when I pretend to not be sure what her name is. The other students in the class are named Sammy, Frederick, Apple, Pear, and Banana. It's fascinating to see how much more happily and successfully she participates in daily chores as well as obviously schoolish activities (like me writing words on a dry erase board and having the "students" figure out what they say) when she's in pretend-mode. So doing the watering outside and feeding the animals becomes part of a "class field trip." One of the students (Sammy) often needs some help with things (I think he's a bit younger than Elena), and she loves showing him how to do things and helping him out. For example, she showed Sammy how to use the Graduated Cylinders, explaining the process out loud the whole time. Also, if I notice that Elena needs to pee, sometimes I'll make a whole-class potty break (in which all the students go to the bathroom; Elena's usually in the middle of the line to go) or I'll say that Sammy has to go the the bathroom and could she please help him out since he gets a little scared to go alone. She happily complies. (Going to the bathroom has sometimes been a power struggle with her.)

I'm amazed at how easy it is to get Elena to do something by saying, "Okay, class: raise your hand if you want to be the person who picks up the toys and puts them in this box" instead of just asking her to pick up the toys. This whole things reminds me of this article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27tools-t.html that cited research showing that kids could stand still for some four times longer if they were pretending to be a guard than if they were just asked to stand still. The same article emphasized imaginary play as possibly being the most important thing that kids do in kindergarten, particularly in the development of executive functioning (you should check out the article; it's really interesting).

We are, generally, very opportunistic schoolers. For example, Elena's recent watching of Wallace and Gromit's "A Grand Day Out" led to quite an extended investigation into the moon and the planets. Now, for a couple of days, Erich and Elena have been discussing and reading about the planets. Elena has many interesting questions and we work to answer them. I have been enjoying the Sonlight curriculum because Elena frequently wants to be read to and the Sonlight stuff provides a lot of interesting quality books that spark good discussions. She especially loves Usborne's Living Long Ago. After we cover each module (Vikings, Middle Ages, Reformation-era Europe, etc), we find something to put onto the timeline (a great "Book of Time" that came with the Sonlight package) and something to write on the Markable Map (another sonlight thing). These are activities that Elena really enjoys, though she's not always in the mood for them. And when she's not in the mood, I don't worry about it. She will come back to it later. Part of me really wants to be quizzing her to make sure that she's actually retaining some of the material, but I am comforted by hearing her ask good questions about it and hearing her incorporate things from past "lessons" into current discussions (little things like when reading about the Vikings taking slaves she jumped in with, "Just like Saint Patrick was a slave!" I hadn't been sure that anything from the story of Patrick had sunk in).

One of our challenges lately has been coming to realize that Elena has a greater need for social interaction than either Erich or I had when we were children. Both Erich and I were more loners in school and loved learning stuff on our own. Elena seldom wants to do things (for example, work with her Montessori materials) on her own, but she is willing to do just about anything if it means she gets to do it WITH someone. We're trying to take this as actually being part of her "learning style" and going with it rather than trying to fight it so much. Though creating a "classroom" full of other "students" has helped, giving her some imaginary social interaction. This way, I don't have to sit there with her doing the activity, but I can be working on something else and just pipe in with things that "Sammy" might say.

My last highlight from this pretend world is from yesterday: Elena managed to have a rousing game of tag with the other "students" on the lawn. Highly enjoyable for Elena. Hilarious to watch.