In Praise of Sassy Girls, Smart Children and a Great School

Last night Kaitybean was playing Scrabble with JDub and my brother and his wife. Somehow they got on the subject of nouns and someone asked her what a noun was.

"Person, place or thing," Kaitybean said. "Like, in the sentence 'The frightened girl ran away quickly.' the noun is 'girl'."

So, they all quizzed her on which word in that sentence was an adjective, which was the verb. I asked her about adverbs and whether or not she knew what they were.

"Adverbs are the how, where and when of the verb," she answered, "Like quickly. That's how the girl ran. Quickly is the adverb."

Then, my sister asked, "So what is the preposition in that sentence?"

Kaitybean came back with, "Well, it would be 'away', but there is no object of the preposition, so 'away' is actually another adverb."

We all laughed and were terribly impressed.

I didn't know that kind of stuff until I was in college and teaching others how to write.

I love Kaitybean. And I love her school. And I love Shurley English.

In other news, we're moving Scud to 1st grade this week. I've really struggled with the decision and almost put him in first grade this year to begin with, but felt that Kindergarten would be best. But, a couple of weeks ago he told me, "Mom, I'm too old and too smart for kindergarten. I think you need to think about putting me in first grade." How do you argue with that? After talking to his teacher and principal, some testing and a trial period in first grade math it turns out he was right.

I've been agonizing over the decision -- thinking about cause and effect, everything from when he gets his license to when he'll go on a mission. Finally, I just decided that it's foolishness on my part to make decisions based on "what ifs" and "mights". I do know that this is the right decision for right now. I can worry about tomorrow's decisions tomorrow.

UPDATE: We (Scud's principal, kindrgarten teacher, 1st grade teacher and I) had a meeting this morning. We determined that it would be best to have Scud do one more trial week -- this time for a full day of first grade. We will evaluate next Tuesday. My main concern is that don't want him to go from beimg way ahead of his classmates to a point where he's struggling to keep up.