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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Kindergarten - Not Just Playdough and Crayons Anymore

My twin girls are in kindergarten at a wonderful public school in our neighborhood.  We feel incredibly lucky to live so close to such an exceptional public school.  They are in different classes, but the teachers work closely together so all their projects are similar.   They have the exact same homework each week.  That's right... I said homework.  In KINDERGARTEN.  It's usually only one or two work sheets each night, but sometimes it causes me a lot of angst.   

Since they are in KINDERGARTEN, homework requires my supervision.  I don't always have time to sit down separately with them so I work with both of them at the same time.  This drives me nuts.  There is a lot of "why is she ahead of me" or "she stole the glue" or "she's doing it wrong."  Not to mention that Gloppy wants to do homework too.  So I have to photocopy their work sheets so that he can scribble on them.  Homework is not my favorite time of day.

But tonight was actually kind of fun.  Everyone was in a good mood and Gloppy was at my in-laws so I could focus on the Princesses.  Today at school they had a presentation from a group called Wildcare.  Apparently they learned about different kinds of animals and taxidermy.  Taxidermy?  OK.  Part of their homework tonight was to write and illustrate what they learned.   Princess Lolly learned that "turtles can't take off their shells."  Very nice.  Here is her "rainbow turtle."


Princess Frostine was beyond excited about her illustration.  There were no live animals at this presentation, so I am not sure where this came from, but take a look.


In case you can't read that, it says "the bird peed on his feet."  It was all I could do not to laugh.  She described the bird in detail the whole way home from school, so I was anxious to see her rendition.  I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a vulture or some type of exotic bird.  She was so proud.

When I pulled out their second sheet of homework, I thought there must be some mistake.  Here's what my KINDERGARTNERS had to do.


Seriously?  Subtraction with numbers greater than ten?!  I can't even do some of these without using my fingers.   I'm going to have a really hard time with homework when they get to first grade.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Apparently, you are not alone. My next-door neighbor is a kindergarten teacher (will be Princess Lella's teacher next year) Another neighbor girl is in her class this year and says they have homework every night and b/c her daughter is a bit of a perfectionist, it takes a while sometimes. Thank God, mine is not a perfectionist! Anyway, as crazy as it seems, we should be pleased that the school system is asking a little more of kids and parents. My hubby is a high-school teacher, and the last few years have not been kind to this generation. A majority of those kids don't get it, don't want to get it and generally don't care about much. I'm not saying it is the schools' fault, b/c, unfortunately, in our area, there are lots of parents who don't care either and have not been paying attention. So, I guess I'm glad they don't seem to be "dumbing it down" anymore. Perhaps our kids' generation will see an upturn in education, attitude, etc...

-QueenMum (AKA QueenBee who couldn't remember her other name earlier tonight as I am too sleep deprived and have a head full of snot from the cold I got from Princess Lella, oh, and I lost my voice tonight as well)