Gone are the days when kindergarten meant going to school, playing and making simple crafts. These days, the schools expect kids coming into kindergarten knowing what used to be standard for kids by first grade when I was younger. The pressure is on to make sure your child is 'up to par' with gross and fine motor skills, and can jump right in once the school year begins. And, since a lot of parents are waiting until their children are 6 to begin elementary school, its creating a cycle where the kids who start as young 5's like Logan will can have almost a year between themselves and some of their classmates. As a parent, you have to decide, will it hurt your child to be one of the youngest in the class... do you want them to be the oldest and perhaps not challenged enough, leading to boredom and behavioral issues.
But I truly believe each parent has to follow their gut instinct on this. So many things factor in to a child's being ready or not. Are they developmentally on track? Are they socially mature enough to handle it? Can they sit still and follow directions? Are they academically ready?
Today we had Logan's parent teacher conference at preschool. His teacher had a whole folder of his work to show us, beginning of the school year until now. She's also been doing different exercises with the kids to assess where they're at and what their strengths are weaknesses are. Although I talk to her the four days a week I take Logan to school and pick him up, this was a nice 25 minute conversation, uninterrupted and completely focused on Logan and his performance at school.
We had very recently finally come to the decision on our own to send him to kindergarten next fall. We decided this for so many reasons I can't even write about them all here, but ultimately we completely feel he'll be ready. He's grown so much this preschool year socially, developmentally and in every other area, and he's going to be ready for the next challenge 6 months from now. If at some point, early in elementary school, it seems he's academically far behind most kids in his class (from being younger), we can always decide to hold him back and repeat a grade.
The other truth to the matter is, kindergarten is free, preschool, five mornings a week, is expensive.
Ultimately, if we really felt he truly wasn't ready to begin kindergarten.. if there were major developmental or behavioral issues, for example, we would have definitely considered sending him to preschool one more year to mature out of some of that before sending him to kindergarten. A year ago, I really was on the fence about this. But in the last 6 - 8 months its become abundantly clear he's not only ready, I think he will thrive.
Going into this conference today with his teacher, Andrew and I knew we had made our decision and were following our guts. But it was still interesting to get his teachers' insight and see his school work.
She was really thorough and talked about everything from how he cuts (great), how he interacts with other kids (wonderful, with a few minor blips here and there), how he follows step by step directions (perfect, and stays on task all on his own), his knowledge of numbers/shapes/colors/concepts (completely up to speed for a kid his age).
This is a circle he cut by himself back in September. Pretty darn good, I'd say.
He understands the concept of things happening in a certain order.
He knows how to pick colored pattern up and glue a pattern on another piece of paper.
The one thing challenging him right now is handwriting. He needs much more practice applying the right amount of pressure to his writing utensil, and forming his letters with more definition. This came as no surprise at all, since we gots a heads up on this last fall and have been working with him a lot on his fine motor skills. Dylan's handwriting was the same way at this... I think its very common for boys to struggle with this area. They're more active than girls and have spent these early years honing in becoming gross motor experts..not sitting still for long periods and coloring/drawing. By first grade, Dylan's handwriting was greatly improved and now its even better. It just takes time and practice.
Despite that one little area that needs work, she agreed with us, he's completely ready for kindergarten and she thinks he'll do well next fall. We just have to work on his handwriting between now and the end of the summer. And between the internet, and amount of teachers I know, I'll have all the resources in the world to make sure he gets lots and lots of handwriting practice.
I feel good we've not only made our decision for him, and that we strongly feel its the right decision, but that his current teacher feels he's ready too.
Kindergarten registration in our county is Apil 12th. And I'll be there, standing in line, forms in hand, trying not to tear up about sending my youngest baby off to kindergarten next fall and seeing him reach yet another huge milestone.
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