Tuesday, August 28, 2007

So far so good....

Well, after two days of school things are going pretty good. I managed to keep Bear busy and happy while staying on track for Curly Q. work. I put out three "center" type activities for Bear and called it preschool. She took the bait and spent all morning on Monday doing the activities. Today after we did reading and math we went to the library. I began teaching Curly Q.how to use the computer to find books about a specific topic while Bear played. Curly Q. seemed a little distracted so I am worried about whether my plan to do school work at the library on Tuesdays is going to work. I am also considering changing from the first grade language arts lessons I am using to the second grade ones. Right now it is nice because Bear has been joining us, but today's lesson was about opposites and Curly Q. didn't learn anything new from it.

On a different subject, a friend of mine just sent her daughter to kindergarten. She was telling me about the weekly schedule, and I cannot believe that the kids have time to learn anything. Kindergartners go for just over 2 hours. On four days they go to a special class (gym, art or music) that lasts at least 45 minutes. They have 15 minutes of announcements, 15 minutes of clean-up at the end of class, and a 15 minute snack. That leaves a whopping 30 minutes to teach a class of 25+ five year olds. My guess is that they won't be learning much more than how to stand in line and play dodge ball.

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