Do you have a graduation happening in your family this season? If so, congratulations! Graduations are important life cycle events and whether your child is graduating from pre-school or high school, this is a time to celebrate all the milestones your child has achieved over the past few years.
I cried my eyes out when my daughter graduated preschool. It seemed impossible to me that my baby was old enough to leave the small, loving pre-school where she had so many happy hours and enter the large and intimidating elementary school as a kindergartner. But I could see she was ready…big kid school was exactly what she needed to spread her wings and grow. It was me who wasn’t ready. I admit I cried when she got on the bus to kindergarten that first day. Did she cry? Absolutely not. For her it was full steam ahead: Look out world here I come!
Now that same daughter will soon be finishing 4th grade. In September, she will be the big kid on the bus serving as a patrol and helping the little scared kindergarteners take their first bus ride to the big school.
To acknowledge her new maturity, she and I spent a rainy weekend totally redoing her bedroom. We moved the furniture around, took down the baby-ish pictures on the walls and put up posters more appropriate to a kid who will soon achieve double digits. She started to pull all the picture books off her shelf to make way for the stacks of chapter books that were piled everywhere. It was a bittersweet moment made even more bittersweet when we found the many issues of Spider Magazine on her book shelf. Spider is our magazine for kids approximately 6 to 9 years old, and she will soon be 10. It’s time to move up to Cricket, our magazine for kids ages 9 to 14.
After we found the horde of Spider magazine back issues, we spent a good half-hour looking through them. She flipped to the stories about the little witch Zouk and read through a few Doodlebug and Dandelion stories, which were always good for a laugh. And then we packed them into boxes with the other books to be donated or given away to little cousins.
Transitions
Soon new issues of Cricket will take up the same space on the bookshelf ushering in a new era of reading enjoyment. The end of the school year is a great time to make changes like these. As you transition to summer, you might also want to think about moving your Cricket Media subscriptions to keep them age appropriate.
It seemed to me like it was just a few weeks from preschool graduation to 4th grade. From little kid to big kid. From toddler to double digits. She has graduated from so many things already: diapers, training wheels, Bitty Babies, easy readers…but we both know the best is yet to come. And next year, at her elementary school graduation, I recognize that I’ll be the only one crying about it.
By my daughter’s request, here is the story, Zouk by the Sea, to make you smile.
