Changes in Kindergarten

It's amazing to me how much kindergarten has changed over the last 25 - 30 years.  What I did, educationally, in kindergarten in the mid-80s pales in comparison to what kids are doing now.  I remember my kindergarten days being filled with playtime, crafts, recess, lunch, nap, snack, more playtime, etc.  I'm sure we learned about numbers and letters, but reading was not part of the kindergarten curriculum back in my day.  Reading simple books and learning 'sight' words or 'popcorn' words was not a kindergarten activity.  These were first taught in first grade.

Today things are completely different.  In fact, many pre-schools are teaching kids several sight words to learn before they enter kindergarten.  For the full year of pre-school my daughter had a couple of sight words to learn each week.  Sight words are also part of her kindergarten curriculum, but so is reading simple books.  Each week she comes home with a 7 or 8 page book with simple sentences in it that she is required to read every night.  Today I received an email from her kindergarten teacher that all kids are bringing home "Fluency Folders" tonight.  The Fluency Folders will have words that parents need to practice with their children.  The point is to get kids to recognize words quickly, so the activities are timed.

Personally I think these changes are great.  At the same time, however, there's more pressure on my wife and I, as parents, to work with our daughter on reading.  One would think that since I'm a teacher, this would be easy, but I'm not a kindergarten teacher and teaching kids at that age is not my strong suit.  But this will be a learning experience for all of us and I'm excited to see what the Fluency Folder brings to my daughter's education.

Now if only we can get schools to encourage the advancement of science teaching in the classroom.  It's great that reading is being pushed and reading is the gateway to future success, but many schools are cutting science programs due to a lack of funding or due to lack of time that is needed to focus on reading and math.    But that's a discussion for another post.  :-)