Elementary school ain’t no joke
I must say that I remember kindergarten as being a time of
coloring, playing, snacking, napping, and MAYBE learning the alphabet. It was a simpler time, when you could play
the morning away before your mom came to get you around noon. That’s right, back in my day kindergarten was
only half a day. I have a kindergartener
and a first-grader now, and they spend from 8:45 am to 3:45 pm in school every
day.
As for playing in school, or spending all day coloring-
forget it! The kindergarten teacher has a color-coded behavior system: red
means bad, yellow means the kid was sorta bad, and green is good. Now let’s talk about Cougar, my
kindergartener. He is the class clown,
as described by his teacher. You can
probably imagine that he brings home lots of yellows and reds. The reasons are sometimes written in his
folder, and sometimes not. The written
ones from last week’s red days said, “playing and throwing his hat around” and “howling
during the 2nd grade play.”
During the last parent-teacher conference, the teacher told me that all
the kids love Cougar, and Cougar loves all the kids. He gives everyone hugs and plays with
everybody. He’s very inclusive. HOWEVER, being the class clown means that he
is forever getting into trouble for not following directions or for not
listening. As far as his schoolwork
goes, he doesn’t care too much about it yet.
He has only learned 50 out of the 100+ sight words he is expected to
learn, and he can’t really read yet. He
knows his alphabet and can count to 100, but that’s about it for him. He can write his name and some easy words,
but again, that’s it. He has homework
twice a week. That’s right- my
KINDERGARTENER has to do homework.
Wednesday is always reading homework because he is expected to be able
to read with some fluency by the time he hits first grade! I can’t believe this myself. I think
kindergarten should be more about learning through play, and NOT about
pressuring these poor kids to read before they are ready. I didn’t even begin learning to read until
first grade.
Now don’t get me started on first grade! I’m super lucky to
have my smartypants son Tyger in first grade right now, because first grade is
TOUGH now. They do not have a color-coded behavior system, and they don’t have
snack time. They are expected to have learned to read in
kindergarten, so they start right away with spelling words, reading tests, and
math problems. Tyger usually has
spelling, reading, and math homework every week. I don’t have to worry so much about Tyger,
because he’s been reading since he was 2, and he does multiplication tables for
fun while the other kids are still adding and subtracting. He goes to a special smartypants class every
Thursday called ACE, where hopefully his brain is stretched, but in reality he
says he just plays on computers. Tyger
has been described by his teachers as quiet and reserved, with just a few
friends. He is super smart, so the classwork is boring him, but his teacher
assures me that 2nd grade will be a bigger challenge for him.
