Now What?

I love to read and learn. I have been so excited, looking forward to Kate's first day of kindergarten. She's been a bit hesitant, but the other night when she was up crying, I pulled her into my lap and whispered sweet nothings about dress up corner, drawing in shaving cream on the table, and circle time.

Then I went to the parent orientation.

Evidently gone are the happy little kindergarten days where children learn to play, share, and oh yeah learn to read along the way. The schedule itself disappointed me--an hour of math, 90 minutes of reading, another unit of language arts in the afternoon, they get a grand total of 30 minutes to do both social studies and science (of course the chemist loves this one). The only free play was during a 20 minute recess.

Then I get the list of skills she will learn. As I look through it, I see that she already does three-fourths of the list. And I wasn't trying. And it sure didn't take 7 hours a day.

Next up the teacher informs us that there will be homework. In KINDERGARTEN! Not occasionally, but weekly packets. And they will have a thirty minute rest time, right before they come home. As the year wears on and they are less tired, she'll pop in a movie. What?! Isn't everyone screaming to turn off the TV? You'll let her watch TV at school (using up her allotment, so I feel guilty about turning it on if I want to while I cook dinner), and send home homework for her to do in her few minutes of free time.

I have Kate reading already. The only thing she has left to do on the language arts is learn some words on sight (rather than sounding them out) and write a 3 word sentence. I was a teacher and I'm pretty sure we can be there at Christmas with half an hour (not 2 hours) a day. That leaves a lot of extra time for math, science, social studies, art, music, and time to live in the world of being four. We have a little more to do in math, but she's still about halfway through that list too.

We had decided to go ahead and try it, but as the night wore on (Kate woke up upset about school again.) and we prayed about it. I'm really considering yanking her before school starts. Part of me wants to try it, so we can say we gave it a shot, but my gut is saying un-enroll her and run for it. Justin is behind home school 110%. Financially, it stinks--I could go back to teaching here and make a nice salary, but I want my kids to love learning and to, well, actually learn something. Besides, teaching other peoples' kids really stressed me out! I was always afraid I'd make a mistake and mess someone up--goodness knows I've already messed up with my kids, so another mistake or two along the way won't ruin us.

So today will likely be decision day, as to whether we try the first grading term or just start learning (which is totally not true, since we've been teaching her since she was born) at home from the beginning. Teacher that I am, I have on hand lots of resources from when I was a classroom teacher, so wish me luck today as I try a sample day. Then we'll have more information to base our decision on.

Also in play is that we moved to Timbuktu to be in a nice school system for Kate, so if we can take that out of the equation it will be easier to find a house close to work for Justin when we're ready to buy. And it will have a home school room. Definitely not a deciding factor in our choice, but a side benefit.

I'm praying to make the best choice for this sweet little girl.

I bet we can put all sorts of cool things in that backpack here too. Not to mention her cute little head.

Testing 1, 2, 3--or Not

I took Miss Kate for her kindergarten readiness testing today. Due to her birthday (she was born only 4 days before the cut off) the school officials offered to let her enroll in an early fives program. I was so busy turning down that program that I forgot to ask how she scored. I did learn that it wasn't entirely accurate as the day wore on and we found out more about the test. Kate was asked if she knew her numbers. She told the teacher that she didn't. A flustered Justin pointed at four or five different numbers on a paper and she got them all correct. She told us she doesn't know all of her numbers. I think it's okay if she doesn't go to kindergarten knowing pi or the square root of negative one, but evidently Miss Kate thinks she needs to know them all. I have to wonder what other things she might have held out on.

There was no need for the backpack today, but she had to take it with her, even if I made her leave it in the van. It's pretty, pink, and covered in Disney princesses. It's hard to believe that she'll be going to school next week!

Registered

My little gal is growing up. Yesterday I took Miss Kate to register her for kindergarten. Had we stayed in Kansas, she wouldn't have started school for another year, but here in Tennessee she scrapes in a couple of days under the deadline.

Here she is with her ice cream cone we got after her immunizations last week.

We went to the school yesterday morning and got the paperwork to fill out, birth certificate, social security card, lease, immunization record, and health release in hand--nothing like bureaucracy. The office was quite busy as we stepped inside. One of the secretaries called for the mainance fellow to set up a couple of tables in the cafeteria. I think she took pity on me as I was standing trying to fill out forms with Nate wrapped up in the Moby (reaching for the pen) and keeping an eye on the girls.

Kate was quite impressed with the playground and all the panda bears they had decorating the school. The pandas are quite funny because when we first moved to Kansas, Kate saw a sign for a Panda Express on the other side of town. She made up this great story about how she went to Panda Bear Preschool--I wrote about it here. We thought she'd forgotten about it, but this week as we were driving over to Target we saw another Panda Express and she excitedly prattled off, "That used to be my preschool! During the day it's a preschool and at night it's a place to eat!" So Kate finally gets to go to the Panda Bear School.

I asked her if she was more excited about learning to read or to do math and she told me, "Nope. The playground!" I guess she has her priorities straight.