Sitting Still in Pre-K

Glad you bring this up Lenore. We need to take a good, hard look at who is pushing for education “reform” & who profits. Spoiler alert: bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Eva Moscowitz, etc. We can thank Common Core for depriving even our youngest children of play in order to make teachers “accountable”, while making the aforementioned along with hedge funders, charter operators, & testing companies richer. It’s time parents & students rise up & demand that education return to a system designed for learning, not for competing. We need to hold politicians & “reformers” accountable for what they’ve done to education.

I taught in a preschool for 3 years after college, not once did a parent approach me to discuss how their child was maturing socially. I did, however, get lots of question about what level of math their 3-year-old would be learning, or whether their 5-year-old will have memorized the scientific method by the end of our program.

The mother of one little girl, who was painfully shy, expressed some concern when another little girl drew her a friendly picture and placed it in her cubby. “Don’t you think that’s weird?” the mother said, as if she had no recollection of what it was like to have friends.

I appreciate everything that you stand for, Lenore, but things are getting worse. At this rate, the socially-inept majority will be too afraid of children preying on children to allow basic interaction.

here’s a pre-school-related report about a free-range 3-yearold from a free-range grandmother in Kemptville, Ontario, to her mother (the great grandmother): Today Sam and I had fun in Kemptville while his mother went to the gym in Ottawa and did some shopping. First we walked (Sam on his scooter) to his playgroup for the morning. Then we walked (scooted) to the library where I did some work on my laptop and Sam played math games on the computers in the children’s section. Then we shopped for our lunch at the grocery store downtown and ate it outside at a picnic table – and scooted home and made tea a half an hour before his mother came home.

Sam’s scooter, as he noticed today, has four wheels! The front ones are about a centimetre apart and they steer when he tips the front post to one side or the other. His balance when he whizzes along on it is superb, and back when he’d misjudge a slope of the road edge along Mill Street and take a tumble (or fall in any other way) he’d roll rather than fall (last winter there was a while when he’d lie down and roll down any little slope he encountered when we were out). Also when you’re out with him and he’s whizzing on the scooter, if there’s a car approaching from either direction on the street, he stops, gets off the scooter, goes to the edge of the road, and makes sure that the supervisory adult has also left the roadway. Yesterday he was also on my case when I was walking in the middle of the street rather than on one side of the pavement.

I am a very indulgent Grandma – I let him do dangerous things, like walking on his own along the edge of the stone wall of the creek in town, and when we’re going on a sidewalk, scooting way ahead of me right to the next corner. Sometimes I see people looking around for whose little boy this loose one might be, he’s so young to be moving so fast! He never crosses a street until I catch up with him and we both look both ways before crossing. And I carry his scooter in parking lots. Every time we cross a parking lot I talk to him about how dangerous Kemptville parking lots are and why.

Sam recognizes all his numbers and letters, and can do simple addition like 2+2 and 2+3. He’s so bored at playgroup when they do letters and numbers recognition as a group, because it’s old hat for him. Some group songs he likes, especially the ones with gestures, which he does very expressively. Others he has decided he has had enough of, like the sleeping bunny chant. They all have to lie still like sleeping bunnies and then hop up awake. Today he put on a sour face for that one and went and hid his head in the pile of cushions. I think he would like for them to get over the sleeping bunnies and move on. But there are some things they do every day without fail.

Sam likes variety and new challenges, and tends to vary the way he does things, rather than enjoying habits and rituals. He has many stuffed toys but tends not to cuddle with them or carry them about. He has only one favorite toy and that is a black and white jointed robot with great big feet that he has named Tito. He doesn’t know any Tito, in person or in story or movie – he likes to make up entirely new names for things, and this one he’s really stuck with.

He also remembers a new word from one hearing with definition, and we’ll hear him use it in a sentence hours or days later. On Sunday we took him the long way home from Meeting, and stopped to check out a marsh. He stood on the corrugated culvert pipe to swish grandpa GrubGrub’s big frog net in the water, and said “I seem to be standing on a culvert pipe.” He hadn’t heard the term “culvert” since the summer. Really he talks like a five-year-old and he’s a lot of fun to converse with.

These days he’s fiercely independent about anything he knows he is able to do – and also rather competitive and territorial. He didn’t want his mother to sit on the toilet this morning because he wanted to use it. He requires a lot of talking-to, as he still has three-year-old reasoning.

He learns everything you tell him though, so it’s worth it. But you have to explain it from where he’s at in his stage of reasoning, and sometimes that’s an interesting challenge. He changes so fast!

It’s so good for him to have to share toys and be considerate to other children at the playgroup. He goes at least two mornings a week. It’s run by a county government agency at the “Early Years Centre” free of charge on every weekday morning, walking distance from their house.

When I take him I have to lay aside who I am and forget everything else that is important to me, and just relax and tolerate the situation, watching Sam and the other children and their parents and grandparents. Sometimes Sam calls me to participate in his play, but otherwise he’s rather a loner. Although he’s polite to other children, he doesn’t seek out them out to play with. This will take time. He only went occasionally to playgroup when they lived out of town.

My now straight-A high school freshman son didn’t know a single letter of the alphabet when he started kindergarten. He was too busy playing. Also, the teachers in our schools who win awards are often least liked by the students. Their numbers must look good, I guess.

Our 5 year old went to a wonderful daycare with a play-based preschool curriculum. Her pre-K teacher, who has been teaching 4 year olds for 27 years, told us upfront that given the state of public education in the US today this would be our kids’ last year of learning primarily through play and she wanted to make the most of it. They did do brief periods of “seat work” and had to start raising hands to be called on because the pre-K teacher didn’t want the much more constrained classroom environment of kindergarten to be a total shock.

We have friends whose kids were in daycares with pre-K programs that included mandatory, nightly homework, where the kids sat at desks and where there was no play outside of “recess”. For FOUR YEAR OLDS. Given that, we’re relieved that our toddler goes to the same daycare where we know she has at least a few more years of learning the way that young children learn best – through play and experiential learning.

Our daughter attends a public elementary school where the principal made snide comments about anti-Common Core parents at the kindergarten orientation. She’s several grade levels ahead in reading and at least one grade ahead in math, and her teacher goes out of her way to differentiate instruction as much as possible to keep her engaged. What we don’t love is how the school and district administrators’ focus appears to be single-mindedly focused on test scores. There’s homework plus required reading every weeknight – even in kindergarten. Our daughter loves science and social studies, but those are basically afterthoughts at her school because the curriculum is so single-mindedly focused on reading and writing. I don’t think the students get enough math instruction, and what they do get is “literacy-based”. They have kindergarteners learning how to fill out bubble sheets because they start phasing in formal testing in first grade, to prepare for Common Core testing starting in third grade. The gifted & talented program has been gutted district-wide and gifted students are not allowed to skip grades because they need those high achievers to pull up average scores.

There are no good alternatives. We both work full time so homeschooling isn’t an option (nor do we want to homeschool). The parochial schools are all following Common Core-based curricula now, right down to the standardized testing focus, and we can’t afford the nonsectarian day schools.

Even though kindergarten in my state is only half-day, and even though our nearby school is one of the top-rated in the state, this is a big part of why I’m opting to homeschool. When I heard that even the kindergartners get assigned homework, and this school is a big advocate for common core with all the required tests, I couldn’t bring myself to enroll my oldest son. I’m happy to say I’ve always been more concerned with how my son treats other people and plays with other kids, because he’s going to be interacting with people his entire life. The rest of the stuff can be learned as he wants or needs and definitely only when he’s ready.

As an aside, I remember my favorite school years being fifth and sixth grade. It was a combined class with one teacher, Mr. Lawrence, who was amazing. Homework was minimal – a puzzle (crossword, wordsearch, etc) that I don’t think was graded, and we never got them on the weekends or over breaks. All of our math was done in class, we learned BASIC programming on old TRS-80s, he read aloud to us every day, and we still had down time every day where we could choose to play computer games, or read, or whatever. We also generally had an extra recess at least once a week where we would get out and play kickball, even in the winter. That’s the kind of teaching we should be seeing in our classes.

I honestly believe most teachers and administrators don’t believe that recess and movement and play would make better test scores. It baffles me why they continue to double down on the instruction time and homework and lecture time. I’m not against testing at all. When American high schoolers can’t read or do basic arithmetic, or know nothing about history, there needs to be some accountability. Testing can be a good way of providing that. But all I hear is the whining and moaning about teaching to the test, we need more time in the classroom, we need to start them when they are 2, etc. How about you believe the studies such as the one above and implement these techniques and trust that kids will learn better, and gasp, perhaps do better on the tests.

Paul Bearer, that story about a mom thinking it “weird” that another kid put a drawing in her daughter’s cubby is just so sad. When my daughter pulls a picture out of her cubby (that doesn’t bare the hallmarks of her artistic obsession of the moment) my first question is usually “Is this yours, or a gift?” She gets lots of gift drawings, or pretend invitations, or secret messages. They can be pretty strange sometimes, piles of tiny scraps of paper, a folded paper with one mark, or representational art that obviously took a lot of 4 year old effort to produce. They are all wonderful, because they all have a story. And a lot of the art projects of the day that the teachers talk about never make it home, and I can only assume were gifted to her friends. I hope the mother was disabused of the notion that it was weird to get a gift from a friend.

Every year there are thousands of children who are kidnapped in less than a second after they go outside. The statistics are overwhelming. Ask any political opportunist or profiteer in the child sex abuse prevention and rescue business.

Body movement and music are so important to teaching. Several years ago I began shaking my son’s blanket and counting to three before he went to bed. As he grew older, we counted higher. This summer he insisted that we begin counting backward – his idea – and now we frequently shake blankets together and count forward or backward from 82 or 45 or whatever he feels like. I didn’t do this to teach him numbers, I did it because it was fun. Learning was the byproduct.

I have always used music to help him learn things too. I wanted him to learn our address this summer and straight memorization wasn’t doing it, so I put our address to music (There was a farmer had a dog…). He knew it within five minutes. Anything I need him to memorize gets put to a song, any song. It really works.

I went to an open house day at a Steiner School. In 1st grade the children embroidered their names. The needle was almost as blunt as a knitting needle and the material a very loose weave. The school did this because they knew the importance of developing hand-eye coordination.

I thought it was brilliant and thought up a fun way for children to learn hand-eye coordination. I bought a book on animal balloon tying, balloons, and a hand pump. Animals are easy to make from balloons. My kids learned how and took to it like a duck to water.

A word of caution. You can make a sword from a balloon. This may get your child suspended or labeled as a junior terrorist.

It is in Australia too, although not as bad.
There is almost 15 years between the youngest and oldest in the family (the youngest being quite the surprise), and my parents thought the youngest needed to get “socialized” with people his own age before starting school, as he was surrounded by teenagers the rest of the time.

All the settings for three and four year olds were focussed on literacy and numeracy, and not on “a year in the sandpit learning to share”. Eventually my parents found one, a town over connected to a private school, where the focus was not on academics, but was on social skills etc. Which is what a child with only teenage siblings needed.

The elementary school described in second half of the article sounds really bad. Then again, pre-K between 9:30 and 11:45 filled with more organized rigorous activities is unlikely to stung your child social development – example from beginning of article. Two hours of such activities still leaves plenty of time for free play whether alone or with other kids.

I agree with Sam. The dichotomy between free play and rigorous education is false one. Yes drilling letters into four years old is waste of time and full day of sitting nonsense. Then again, there is also such thing as overemphasis on play socialization and how the kid “plays with others”. As much as I would not want my kid to be in over the top school, I would not want him/her (say over 6 years old) to go into opposite extreme school either. I disagree with “all learning must be fun and when it is not then it is horrible” philosophy. Not everything can be fun for everybody.

Also, all those cute time consuming art gifts four years old generate in kindergarden (which were mentioned in these comments) exist only because adults help with them and teach the idea to kids. If you actively do not teach projects, three-four years old wont just suddenly generate elaborate projects. It is learned (or at least observed) thing.

I have another observation: the ability to play alone for a while or even solve problems is completely devalued by all. As if the kid that solves the problem fully alone without help of others be less praise worthy then the one that constantly asks around wont get anywhere without other people (kids adults) chiming in. It is ridiculous, asking a question out loud gets kids more praise then figuring it out.

“The ability to play alone for a while or even solve problems is completely devalued by all.”

I totally agree. Self entertaining and alone time are lost when kids are under constant supervision. There is nothing more annoying than the child who asks questions or requires assistance for every little problem. Asking questions nonstop is viewed as a bright talkative child where the kid that can quietly tie his own shoes at 3 is a “loner”. Give me the loner child to parent any day over the chatterbox.

No child learns the same way. There are kids who love school and will sit quietly through passive lessons and be actively engaged. Then there’s the rest of the class, especially if this is pre-k and 4 year-olds. There’s a whole range of approaches to learning at young ages but rigorous instruction has to have a counterpoint with non-rigorous fun time. Kids this age have a range of attention spans- some like gnats and others like border collies. They also needed free play to find out what they enjoy doing as an outlet.

And I love all of those “time consuming art gifts”. I have a shelf for them in my china closet.

The other piece of this issue that drives me crazy is how much adults expect children to be perfectly still and quiet at all times, especially during school, and if the children aren’t constantly subdued their parents are treated to a lecture about how they should medicate their child or stop feeding them gluten or red dye or some other ridiculous “solution” to the “problem” of an active child. Personally, I think this is partially because the culture of fear has led adults to keep children closer at hand, meaning that kids are constantly inside the house, never more than an arm’s reach from an adult. They’re not necessarily “acting up” more than children of any other generation, adults just notice and are annoyed by it because they made the decision to tie children to their hip for “safety”. I feel for my 9 year old brother, because he’s a little energetic and finds it difficult to sit still in class, so he wiggles and moves a lot (without disturbing other students), and thus four of the five teachers he has had so far have labeled him as having “behavior problems” and have suggested that my parents change his diet or seek ADHD treatment for him, despite the fact that literally the only problem is that he needs to move and that apparently annoys the teacher to the point of suggesting to my parents that he may have a mental disorder and not just that he’s a pretty typical energetic 9 year old. (As a note, to appease the school, they had him evaluated by a doctor, and the doctor concluded that he does not, in fact, have ADHD, but he does have a pretty rapid metabolism, which makes him bouncy and wiggly; even after voluntarily sharing the results of a medical evaluation, teachers have continued to suggest that my parents request he be put on ADHD medication)

Also, some kids prefer less active learning, so let’s not leave them behind.

When I was pre-K age (I entered KG a year early at 4yo), my least favorite part of the day was the “social” time, when the more dominant kids would tell all the others who had to be the mom and who had to be the nurse etc. I was born an introvert, still am, will die one. I also hated doing those stupid wooden puzzles and other “age-appropriate hands-on learning acitivties.” Give me my book, paper, and crayons and let me be! I had the rest of the day (and the weekend) to learn hands-on life skills, fight with my siblings, play with my neighbors, tinker with the piano, and organize my dolls.