(T.B. = Tired Buns)
The conversation Adam and I had today after school:
"Hey, buddy! I'm glad you're home!! How was school today?"
**heavy sigh**
"It was soooo boring. All you do is sit on your butt ALL DAY!!!!!!!"
A few hours later, here is Adam's nighttime prayer:
"Please bless me to be good....
Please bless Aly to be nice at school....
Please bless that I won't have to sit on my butt all day at school...."
Apparently the newness of kindergarten has worn off.
Apparently Adam forgot that "butt" is not an acceptable word.
Apparently, there's not enough going on in kindergarten to keep his attention. I don't think he's being challenged enough, which can be a problem for an active, creative young boy. Right now his class is just learning the alphabet -- how to recognize and write the letter.
Adam knows all of it. He's reading --not Harry Potter, but he's putting 3 & 4 letter words together! He needs more. He will stay on task and stay sitting in his chair if he's given something difficult to work on. Learning what the letter "B" looks like is not challenging!
I don't write all this to brag. Heavens no!! It's just been 11 years since I had a kid in kindergarten and I don't know what's correct protocol. Do I bug the teacher for harder more stimulating work? I can't believe he's the only kid in class that knows the alphabet, am I the only whiny mom?
I'm hoping that Kristi, my dear 1st grade teacher friend, will weigh in with her opinion on this. Also, Thorkgal is heavily entrenched in an elementary school as the librarian, so I'm hoping she'll have some thoughts. I welcome any other thoughts that might be out there--
4 comments:
Yep. Been there, done that twice. I just spoke to the teachers on days I'd volunteer. They both assured me that there are kids like this at the beginning, then once the squeaky wheels get caught-up, things get better. It wasn't more than two weeks before both boys L.U.V.'d kinniegarden again.
Thanks for the link to Kristi! I never knew she had a blog! I'm so excited to read it!!!!
I think thorny is right--it will all work itself out soon.
Smelli,
I don't know why you want my advice. What do I know? From my experience, the first few weeks of school are very boring: procedures, procedures, procedures. Trust me, the teachers don't like it either. But it must be done or else you get nothing accomplished later in the year. There is also a lot of mundane review because you don't know what kids know their abc's and which kids don't. So you have to teach them these things as a type of formative assessment. It's better to start with the basics, rather than having to back-track. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Right now, we are still doing procedures in my classroom. The kids don't really have them down until October. I'm sorry, this probably isn't what you wanted to hear, but it should get more exciting for him soon. Just have him run around all day after school while he still can (before the dreaded snow comes!).
I looks like you've got your answer before I got the chance to check out the blogging world.
There's kids just like Adam in our class too. I feel bad for them because on the other end of the spectrum are kids who don't even know how to hold a pencil. I don't get it... didn't they ever have a color book? Parents!!! We have kids that can't recognize a single letter and we are on the letter "M" now.
Like kristi said, it all has to be done to see where each child is, for testing and all this "No child left behind" crap. While Adam is complaining about his butt, the other kids are dying because it's such hard work and they want to stay home.
If you weren't such a responsible parent... just pray your child doesn't come home one day in the third grade and say, "Mom, I am suppose to bring a color book to school." Why, I asked. "Because I don't have anything to do when my work is done." UGH!!! It happened to me with Braden.
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