Embellishments

Olivia likes to write. She loves holding a pencil/crayon/pen/marker and making marks on paper, or her arms, or the table, or yes, even the wall.

These days, she’s better about only writing on paper but she’s not allowed to have markers unless a parent/caregiver is sitting next to her, supervising so as to ensure that no skin is marked in the making of art.

When I’m helping her with her homework (read: keeping her on task) I often have to remind her not to embellish her work. I remind her several times exactly what her teachers want on the homework page and tell her not to do more than is asked.

She loves to dot the i’s in her name with little squiggles instead of just a miniscule dot. I remind her that it’s a dot, not a squiggle. She giggles at the word ‘squiggle.’

One day she came home from school with some work she’d done in the class. Her teacher wrote this note on her work:

“We are encouraging Olivia to do her classwork on the front page of handouts and to use the back page for her squiggles.”

I love that they use the same word we do for O’s embellishments. I also love that they are trying to encourage her enthusiasm for ‘writing’ while also helping to keep her actual school work embellishment free.

Olivia can be a lot of work, but she’s also a whole lot of fun. I hope her teachers are having as much fun with her as we do at home even as they help to channel her creativity while keeping her on task to get her actual work done.

I admire kindergarten teachers. I really do. I especially admire Olivia's kindergarten teachers. So far, they're doing a great job of bringing my girl out of her shell and giving her ways to be herself.