Vintage Kindergarten

[letisca]

Published just over 50 years ago, We Like Kindergarten is a simple children's picture book that follows one little girl named Carol through her day at Kindergarten. With lovely illustrations by Eloise Wilkin (I have friends whose children look like E. Wilkins illustrations) and simple prose in Carol's own voice by Clara Cassidy, the book is a quick

Comments

[wifeofjoshua]

Fascinating!

This post made me feel really good about my kindergarten efforts. :)

[letisca]

I know, me too!

[tesslouise]

I think kindergarten as it occurs in your average public school right now is an honest to heaven public health threat.

[letisca]

In what way? I'm actually thinking of several things you might be alluding to and I'm not sure which one you mean.

We homeschoolers still get sick :) But the upside is that kids who are sick but who feel well enough to sit up and mess with school work just do that OR they just take a nap until they do. And I don't have to stress about getting a doctor's note to excuse their absences.

But you may be referring to other types of health threats, I can think of several.

[tesslouise]

I think that requiring five- and six-year-olds to wake up super early and do academic work for most of seven hours (minus lunch and recess), in a classroom that may have 20, 25, or even more children with one teacher, and may or may not have windows, is unreasonable in terms of what five-, six-, and seven-year-old brains (and bodies) are supposed to be doing.

Then when some children struggle with sitting still, or paying attention, or learning to read, we assume the child is broken and not the system.

I think we are setting up a lot of children to feel overtired, stressed out, and not good enough when they should still be playing and learning through play.

[letisca]

yep, totally agree.

Its like that bumper sticker that I miss seeing, "Education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire." If Education is merely bucket filling than they earlier the better (and the faster, the better) but that isn't what education really is or should be.

Requiring kids to do developmentally inappropriate things (good things, useful things, important things, but things for which they are not yet ready) generally leads to disaster. :(

I wish I knew more about what Sophie's kindergarten schedule looked like

[emily25069]

Sophie has been my only child to do kindergarten. They did have plenty of Montessori "works" which are kind of like games or toys, and they spent a lot of time rotating those. They did some letter recognition and counting. It wasn't as intense as some kindergartens I hear about, where they are really pushing the children to learn how to read, but it was a full day. There was a rest period of 45 minutes. The teacher said most of the kids couldn't sleep though. They had 2 recesses outside lasting 15 minutes each day.

This vintage kindergarten sounds a lot like what Simon does at preschool though, minus the feeding of the animals.

Re: I wish I knew more about what Sophie's kindergarten schedule looked like

[letisca]

I think Montessori Method is good at recognizing the multiple ways in which kids are developing skills and supporting kids in that development.

How has Sophie's transition been to a non-Montessori based school?

Even if kids don't sleep, the downtime is probably vital for many of them.

Thanks for sharing!

Kindergarten today!

[anonymous]

Laura, both of my kids went through Kindergarten here in Illinois

Re: Kindergarten today!

[letisca]

Teo,
Your solutions for dealing with the school system are really interesting and helpful to read about. Thank you for sharing your experience here. I think there are more parents who might utilize your methods but they are not aware that they have the power to make that kind of adjustment to their child's education.

I think you would like flipping through the book I mentioned. Even in the activities where most of the students are seated for the instruction, the illustrator shows some of the students standing. It made me smile.

all the best to you,
Laura