I live in MD and my son is just finishing Kindergarden. He is a very bright, loving, spirited child. I know that he is not getting what he needs from public school. I would love to home school, but I am a single mother and have to work. I've looked into private schools in the area and was amazed at how expensive they are. And most are just as academically based (some even more so) that public school. I feel like the only mother who has heard of Piaget and stages of development. Why does my 5 year old need to read in 1st grade, when he is just coming to the stage where he can understand abstract principals like time ???
I just had a conference with his teacher--and they are assesing (letter/number recognition, speed etc..) in Kindergarden. Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong?
I'm a teacher, so I'll answer this the best I can. The crux of 1st grade is teaching kids to read. In K they are supposed to learn reading readiness such as letter recognition, sounds of the letters, basic sight words (which are high frequency words that are not necessarily needed to be sounded out such as the, that, etc) and basic 3 letter words that can be sounded out. In 1st grade they learn how to blend the sounds together and this leads to reading fluency by the end of 1st grade, ideally. The skills for becoming a reader begin to be taught in kindergarten so that in 1st grade, your child will have the tools to learn how "decode" the words they see on paper. The social aspects of childhood development in K are just as important (if not more so) than the academic, but K's are becoming increasingly more academic in the last 10 years, since the return of phonics'based reading instruction. Good luck!
