Ready for Kindergarten
Today is the day the kindergarten teachers come to visit. The usual routine is to read a book and let the children ask questions. Four and five year olds still struggle with what a question actually is so we prepared ourselves . We thought about what we wanted most to know about kindergarten and wrote that question on a piece of paper to remind us for when the teachers asked.
The teachers arrived and each of the older children took turns showing them our space.
We all got seated in our family room/block room and the teachers read a story called “Countdown to Kindergarten.” The children seemed to really enjoy the story.
Brantley made a new friend in Mrs Whittington. He seemed very comfortable with her
The children were allowed to ask their important questions and get answers. I got reminded of the sadness that kindergarten brings me. Many of these children are barely 5 and they lose all of the play things and spaces and time to be a little .
A kindergarten teacher would probably argue that they still have things to play with like manipulatives… But that’s a completely different world than what we have here. They will survive and they will be OK I remind myself of that daily- it just makes me sad.
Ready or not kindergarten – here they come!
(Also, I would like to remind you that I feel kindergarten needs to be ready for CHILDREN not children ready for kindergarten.) I think our kindergarten tries- they will be ok.