LOST - kindergarten - Page 2

[expecting-joy]

Update:

Sorry it has been so long, but crazy things happened around here. Anyway...

They are going to start reading groups in January, placing dd with one other "student." Dd and I know who this student is and she is nowhere near dd's reading level. She is just making her way through The Magic Treehouse series. I am concerned about that.

The assistant teacher brought out finger knitting to teach dd and anyone else who was interested. Dd loved that. It also seems to have helped dd start interacting with other children in the class. They also put out more challenging morning games like Monopoly, and dd enjoyed playing that with a couple other children.

I did not get much of an answer on math. Their math is mostly group work/calendar work and things like that.

I fear things may get lost in committee, so I'm planning to get an e-mail back to the principal before school starts.

Since so much happened right after the meting I didn't get a chance to write up a summary. Posting here shows me I really need to sit down and go back through my notes and memory and write it out.

[grumpybear]

Wow. That was my situation a year ago. DS was in kindergarten and from the get go, his kindergarten teacher knew what he was capable of. At that point I didn't push for grade acceleration or gifted testing because I knew that while DS was reading at a very high level (at least 6th grade at that time) and was a few yrs above kindergarten math, he had a lot of learning to do socially. It was verrrrry hard to sit on my hands and watch that all unfold. The approach his teacher took was to give him more open ended projects. Still within the realm of what the class was doing but he had more freedom to take the project and run with it, so to speak. I'm really glad I allowed that social growth for DS instead of focusing on the fact that academically he will learn nothing new in kindergarten (but he did anyway because of science). Of course it's easy to say that now. But anyhow DS was very intolerant of people being wrong. And when you're a gifted child in kindergarten, chances are, your classmates will be wrong a lot and being that they're 5, they will be stubborn about it. That used to drive DS bonkers! But it was all during kindergarten that he learned to appropriately manage that. I suppose what I'm saying is, don't panic just yet. Even if your DD isn't learning anything new academically, she is learning a lot about the culture of learning within a group and dealing with different people. Now that my DS is in 1st grade, I'm a bit more aggressive in pursuing his academic potential.

[expecting-joy]

That is very true. She is learning a lot of new things socially - some of it very frustrating to her, but she feels very stunted intellectually. When they talk about the weather every day, they can only use the words sunny, snowy or rainy, for example. She still spends a good chunk of the day reading on her own. Socially, she has learned to be more patient with her classmates, and not show her initial feelings when her classmates don't know what she does. I don't want her to be in a super-rigid, desks-in-a-row-environment, but it's hard not to wish others in her classroom were where she is.

[grumpybear]

Yup. That is indeed hard if teaching is done within the certain parameters of kindergarten curriculum. Any chance you can talk to teacher and ask for more open ended work?