Enough about aggrevating politics and back to AJ. You remember AJ, don�t you?

Next week we�ll be registering AJ for kindergarten.

I repeat. NEXT WEEK WE�LL BE REGISTERING AJ FOR KINDERGARTEN!

How the hell did this happen? I started getting all weepy just reading the registration sheet that told us what we needed to bring to registration next week � original birth certificate, driver�s license, utility bills, vials of blood, sacrificial animals, document indicating willing sale of soul (signed and notarized, of course). I�m going to have to go into training if I want to get through the first day of school without embarrassing my son, not to mention myself.

My baby�s going to elementary school.

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AJ: What are you reading, Mommy?�
Harriet: It�s information about your kindergarten registration. We need to go next week. Do you want to come with me?
AJ: (starts dancing around the room) I�m going to kindergarten!
Harriet: Are you excited? (Yeah, dumb question)
AJ: (stops and looks thoughtful) I think I�m nervous. And also I�m excited. Can you be nervous and excited at the same time?
Harriet: (thinking about all her first days of school on both sides of the desk), Oh, yes. Definitely.

- - - - -

AJ appears to have responded to the news of imminent kindergarten registration by putting himself on an intense study schedule. He peppers us with math problems at all hours of the day and night. �Mommy, what�s 468 plus 104?� All mealtimes have evolved into fractions in action � he bites his apple in fourths or divides his plate of noodles in half (very carefully, by counting all the noodles � dinners last a very long time in our house). A couple of days ago he came running into the kitchen while I was cooking dinner. �Mommy, what�s 5 times 10?� It was the four hundredth such question of the day. �See if you can figure it out yourself.� He ran into the other room and came back a few minutes later. �It�s fifty. That means there�s fifty pieces of glass in the window.� I dropped my spoon and followed him into the front room. Sure enough, there are fifty panes of glass in the bay window. �AJ, how did you figure that out?� �Well, there are 10 going this way and there are five going this way so it�s ten five times. Right?�

Exactly. This morning he was playing school. He handed me a test where he had drawn a bunch of dots and I had to count them and write how many there were. I got most of them right. �Good job, Mommy!� He wrote a big B+ at the top of the page. Hmm. I wonder when is the right time to teach him about grade grubbing?

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After a little investigation, I discovered the source of AJ�s knowledge of grading strategy. At AJ�s request, AJ�s dad had given him a written test and graded it for him a few days ago. He worked very hard on his test, chewing on his pencil while he thought, and curving his arm around his paper so no one could see what he was doing. Here is the photographic evidence:

If you can read it in the photo, you�ll notice that AJ received a B+ on his first test. You'll also notice that he thought the fastest animal in the world was the hippo (question 1). The hippo is his favorite animal of the moment. Apparently, when his dad told him that answer was not correct, AJ slapped his forehead in disgust and said, �I knew I should have written hippopotamus!� His only other error was on question 8, �What is 842x0.� I thought his answer of 842 was interesting. He knows there�s a standard rule for multiples of 0 and 1, but he sometimes mixes them up. To help him remember, I have to turn the problem backwards: How much is 842 zero times? That may be how he discovered how to count the window panes using multiplication.

I�m starting to wonder how school can improve on AJ�s current self-education. I find it amazing to watch him wrestle with things until he figures them out. Last night he was working his way through a book on fractions that he�d picked out of the library (Loreen Leedy�s Fraction Action -- check this one out, Sandy, if you haven�t seen it. Also her books on other mathematical functions and AJ�s favorite, Postcards from Pluto about the solar system). All of a sudden, you could just see his face change, that he�d had his �aha� moment. If he�d been a cartoon, there would have been a giant flashing lightbulb over his head. Education � good education � is all about that �aha.�

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