To my dear Maia: you have brought so much love and joy into my life as a parent. These 5 years have gone by so fast, and I am awed by your beauty, sweetness and creativity. Maia turned 5 a month ago, and it's just been too busy around here to really reflect on that huge milestone until now.
As if there were any doubt, Maia is a real grade school kid now. She has a uniform dress code at school, and somehow seeing her in her navy and white outfit with her backpack on just seems so grown up. She is mostly self sufficient in getting dressed, getting ready, and sometimes helps make breakfast (either waffles or cereal). She also helps Lucy when asked (and when Lucy allows it!), putting on her shoes or helping her get buckled in the car seat.
Two months into Kindergarten, it feels like she's doing really well. She's one of the youngest in her class and noticeably smaller than a few of her friends (one of whom is a full year older than her). But, she seems happy enough. Her school's mandarin immersion program has her with her primary teacher in Chinese 80% of the time. The other 20% is spent in English Language Arts and enrichment (music, art or nutrition) with one of the two other K teachers at her school, so that she completely associates her primary teacher with speaking only Chinese. Maia was designated the 'star of the week' in her third week in class, with the teacher saying:
Maia is an attentive listener and fully participates during whole group lessons. Maia is not afraid to ask questions to ensure comprehension and consistently stays focused on tasks at hand. She is also caring and kind toward her peers, and never hesitates to lend a helping hand when asked.
The class often does 'centers' which are activity tables where each student works independently. Maia's favorite centers are the drawing table and the building blocks table (I think there are some kind of puzzles or something, kind of tangram-esque.
Her oral and written Chinese vocabulary is already pretty impressive - ability to write in Chinese numbers up to at least 20, plus basic frequent characters:
人个大小天中上下日月 (person, piece, big, small, sky, middle, up, down, day, moon/month)
一二三四五六七 八 十 (1 - 10)
She gets a homework packet every week and is able to complete the 10-12 pages on her own with minimal supervision, just a little nudging to get it done and check her work. And, for the most part, she is happy to do it.
Today (Oct 29) we had our first parent-teacher conference with Chang Lao-shi. While we expected the report to be good, we were really gratified to hear the many ways she is shining at school. The teacher reported Maia to have a love of learning, strong numeracy and ability to start 'translating' internally in terms of math concepts, excellent writing control and retention of vocabulary, strong understanding of the instructions and directions (in Chinese), and an exceptional willingness to help others by sharing her understanding, in other words to translate material given to her in Chinese into English to explain to peers. We were also assured by the teacher's awareness of the need to keep Maia challenged, that being cited as her one learning goal for Maia in the next quarter. I have to say I think that Maia has an outstanding Kindergarten teacher, and I felt this came through 100% in our conference with her.
Socially Maia has one classmate she absolutely loves at school, Ruby, who is her new best friend. She still maintains strong ties to her preschool friends especially Leila, and is becoming attached to a girl Kaelyn who we carpool sometimes with. As the smallest girl in her peer group, many of her friends seem to love to hug her and pick her up (kind of bear hug around the waist). It's kind of funny, I've seen a lot of kids pick her up.
She's particularly prolific in art, drawing constantly in almost all of her free time. Lately her favorite subjects are her family members, unicorns, and dragonflies and fairies. She's taking an art class called Junior Picasso through the Sharon Art Studio, which has vastly improved her figurative drawing so that the people have what I think is pretty amazing balance and proportionality for a 5 year old.
Extracurriculars currently include the SF Girls Chorus (preparatory chorus), gymnastics, and swimming. She is happy with all of the activities, except swimming which has frankly always been a struggle with her and we've agreed to give her a break after the end of November. At this point she has enough swimming skills to be semi independent and to swim (the narrow way) across a swimming pool, but probably is not really able to be water safe. But, her progress has plateaued and I think we all need a break.
At home, she continues to be closer to me and to retain a strong need for love, affection and approval from all family members but especially me and Lau Lau. When there is a change in routine -- a family member traveling -- the emotion can hit Maia very strong and she gets really weepy talking about the person who is gone. She is a kid who seems to really need the solidity of being surrounded by her few near and dear family and friends. She can be shy in new situations and generally does not have a boastful or show-off personality. She still gets totally goofy and silly and tells long drawn out stories and jokes that would be funniest to other 5-year-olds.
One interesting new development is the burgeoning sibling rivalry. When Lucy was an infant and young toddler, Maia completely doted on her. But as we've noted time and again, Lucy is fiercely independent and literally pushes Maia away time and again. As Lucy is becoming a much more capable pre-schooler, Maia's seeing how much Lucy is competing for her share of love, attention, and well, just stuff. I guess we were spoiled in that there was virtually no jealousy from Maia in Lucy's first 2 years, and now it is coming out strongly. I'm currently reading Siblings without Rivalry to get a sense of perspective on the dynamics. I guess it's just part of parenting.... hopefully one day they will be friends and cherish each other, if not now.
