Virtual Learning- Kindergarteners

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're going to try and do virtual kindergarten. We might joim a learning bhibbwith KidsCo.

My husband and I do not have the schedule flexibility to do homeschooling. Our jobs are very meeting heavy

Genuine question: won't distance learning be harder than homeschooling for the parents? Seems like DL gives you very little flexibility?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a first grader. I’m not ok with it, but I don’t think it’s safe to be in person. If he was going into K, I would hold him a year and see if next year is better.

OP here. My DS is a June bday but I just dont want to hold him back. He has an older brother he loves to keep up with and has never had a developmental reason for me to hold him. I dont know that Covid should be the reason, but also bummed that this is his K year.

My kid has a winter birthday and she can already do everything in the kindergarten workbooks they sent home. I don’t think all day zoom is developmentally appropriate but holding her back is an even worse solution. Maybe I’ll homeschool if the next couple weeks are very bad and partial attendance is not okay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not that happy about it but we'll just do our best. By which i mean give it a good faith effort, recognize that a 5 year old will not focus on the screen, and pull back to the minimum if its awful. I know it's developmentally inappropriate so I just hope teachers are understanding, flexible, and positive - 5.5-6.5 hours for a virtual school day is crazy and I half expect them to quietly scale it back after a month.

We practice reading every day and math regularly, I'm less worried about my kid not being ready for first grade and more worried about his emotional health and relationship to school.

Basically this. Our 5YO really needs the socialization and “how to exist in a classroom with other kids” aspect, more so than the academics. He’s too old to hold back. We have committed to two weeks of DL and then we’ll re-evaluate. I am 100% ready to homeschool him if needed, which I actually think could be a lot less work (1-2 hours per day) and definitely way less screen time. But, I know he has an amazing K teacher and I just hope that they somehow prove us wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not that happy about it but we'll just do our best. By which i mean give it a good faith effort, recognize that a 5 year old will not focus on the screen, and pull back to the minimum if its awful. I know it's developmentally inappropriate so I just hope teachers are understanding, flexible, and positive - 5.5-6.5 hours for a virtual school day is crazy and I half expect them to quietly scale it back after a month.

We practice reading every day and math regularly, I'm less worried about my kid not being ready for first grade and more worried about his emotional health and relationship to school.

Basically this. Our 5YO really needs the socialization and “how to exist in a classroom with other kids” aspect, more so than the academics. He’s too old to hold back. We have committed to two weeks of DL and then we’ll re-evaluate. I am 100% ready to homeschool him if needed, which I actually think could be a lot less work (1-2 hours per day) and definitely way less screen time. But, I know he has an amazing K teacher and I just hope that they somehow prove us wrong.

OP here. Yes I agree. So say this year remains all virtual or you homeschool. Youll be sending him to first next year despite missing this year of play/socialization, etc, right? Im hoping first grade curriculum will be adjusted to incorporate more of that play/social skills piece that is now being missed in kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

I’m currently homeschooling our five-year-old.

In virtual school she would be learning a new letter song and dance everyday. Bringing an item to the screen that starts with that letter, getting read to, etc. It was a lot of screen time and waiting and being told to keep eyes on the screen. It was not teaching her anything and wasn’t providing anything social.

Right now we are lying in bed and I’m writing “oa” words on our board so she can read them and then draw a picture. She just finished reading me a book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not that happy about it but we'll just do our best. By which i mean give it a good faith effort, recognize that a 5 year old will not focus on the screen, and pull back to the minimum if its awful. I know it's developmentally inappropriate so I just hope teachers are understanding, flexible, and positive - 5.5-6.5 hours for a virtual school day is crazy and I half expect them to quietly scale it back after a month.

We practice reading every day and math regularly, I'm less worried about my kid not being ready for first grade and more worried about his emotional health and relationship to school.

Basically this. Our 5YO really needs the socialization and “how to exist in a classroom with other kids” aspect, more so than the academics. He’s too old to hold back. We have committed to two weeks of DL and then we’ll re-evaluate. I am 100% ready to homeschool him if needed, which I actually think could be a lot less work (1-2 hours per day) and definitely way less screen time. But, I know he has an amazing K teacher and I just hope that they somehow prove us wrong.

OP here. Yes I agree. So say this year remains all virtual or you homeschool. Youll be sending him to first next year despite missing this year of play/socialization, etc, right? Im hoping first grade curriculum will be adjusted to incorporate more of that play/social skills piece that is now being missed in kindergarten.

They used to have only one hour a day of play on K. It is incredibly focused on academics. Don’t worry about that.

[Anonymous]

We decided to go ahead and give it a try.

The teacher was very engaging and had lots of movement breaks, she sent home manipulative so the kids had all the paper/pencils/crayons/math manipulatives they needed. she even did a read-aloud and told the kids to go find a stuffed animal to snuggle with while they listen to the story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not that happy about it but we'll just do our best. By which i mean give it a good faith effort, recognize that a 5 year old will not focus on the screen, and pull back to the minimum if its awful. I know it's developmentally inappropriate so I just hope teachers are understanding, flexible, and positive - 5.5-6.5 hours for a virtual school day is crazy and I half expect them to quietly scale it back after a month.

We practice reading every day and math regularly, I'm less worried about my kid not being ready for first grade and more worried about his emotional health and relationship to school.

Basically this. Our 5YO really needs the socialization and “how to exist in a classroom with other kids” aspect, more so than the academics. He’s too old to hold back. We have committed to two weeks of DL and then we’ll re-evaluate. I am 100% ready to homeschool him if needed, which I actually think could be a lot less work (1-2 hours per day) and definitely way less screen time. But, I know he has an amazing K teacher and I just hope that they somehow prove us wrong.

OP here. Yes I agree. So say this year remains all virtual or you homeschool. Youll be sending him to first next year despite missing this year of play/socialization, etc, right? Im hoping first grade curriculum will be adjusted to incorporate more of that play/social skills piece that is now being missed in kindergarten.

we are planning on trying to do some social distancing play dates as possible to make sure my daughter still gets to have friendships.

I would remind everybody that a lot of kindergarten socialization is not necessarily about social skills but it's also about things like learning how to line up or sit criss cross apple sauce on the rug etc. I would say that with zooms there's way less time that spent on transitions so there's actually more academic content

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're going to try and do virtual kindergarten. We might joim a learning bhibbwith KidsCo.

My husband and I do not have the schedule flexibility to do homeschooling. Our jobs are very meeting heavy

Genuine question: won't distance learning be harder than homeschooling for the parents? Seems like DL gives you very little flexibility?

I would have thought so too. If i were a busy parent, i would far rather homeschool true academics for 1-2 hours a day (which would basically make your 5 year old an academic superstar), and then hire a run of the mill babsitter to cover the other 6-8 hours a day. If i were a not-busy parent, i would far rather homeschool for 1-2 hours a day and then hang out with my kids for 6-8 hours a day (park, backyard, art projects, baking, etc). I don't know why anyone would pick a school option for their under age 10 kid that involves 5-6 hours a day of virtual learning.

[Anonymous]

I looked into privates and didn't find any I thought were feasible for us. I would home school my DD in a heartbeat if I knew the entire year would be virtual. Virtual K at our DCPS school apparently means less than 2 hours of video call content with hours-long breaks in between that they have yet to tell us what the kids are supposed to do with (first day was less than an hour). I'm still hoping they'll somehow get to go back in person even if it's not until February.

[Anonymous]

Our daycare is doing Kindergarten. So far it's 2 kids. There is a teacher specialized in early childhood education. We didn't want to unenroll due to the discussion about bringing K classes in for hybrid this fall (FCPS) so we'll be doing the bare minimum to count as "present" and then do the rest in person with the teacher. I'm thinking he'll do morning meeting and maybe something like science class online. Supposedly FCPS will be emailing the week's plan on Mondays so our hope is that the daycare teacher can teach the same material in-person. We'll see...there are still so many unknowns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our daycare is doing Kindergarten. So far it's 2 kids. There is a teacher specialized in early childhood education. We didn't want to unenroll due to the discussion about bringing K classes in for hybrid this fall (FCPS) so we'll be doing the bare minimum to count as "present" and then do the rest in person with the teacher. I'm thinking he'll do morning meeting and maybe something like science class online. Supposedly FCPS will be emailing the week's plan on Mondays so our hope is that the daycare teacher can teach the same material in-person. We'll see...there are still so many unknowns.

You can enroll any time you want... They can't penalize you for having withdrawn earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're going to try and do virtual kindergarten. We might joim a learning bhibbwith KidsCo.

My husband and I do not have the schedule flexibility to do homeschooling. Our jobs are very meeting heavy

Genuine question: won't distance learning be harder than homeschooling for the parents? Seems like DL gives you very little flexibility?

I would have thought so too. If i were a busy parent, i would far rather homeschool true academics for 1-2 hours a day (which would basically make your 5 year old an academic superstar), and then hire a run of the mill babsitter to cover the other 6-8 hours a day. If i were a not-busy parent, i would far rather homeschool for 1-2 hours a day and then hang out with my kids for 6-8 hours a day (park, backyard, art projects, baking, etc). I don't know why anyone would pick a school option for their under age 10 kid that involves 5-6 hours a day of virtual learning.

Right now I'm on maternity leave so I was able to monitor my daughter and she barely needed any help for DL, mostly just to learn how to login and how to use the mute button and how to find her materials. After everyone's nightmare story I was expecting to need to micromanage a lot more but she really didn't need my help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're going to try and do virtual kindergarten. We might joim a learning bhibbwith KidsCo.

My husband and I do not have the schedule flexibility to do homeschooling. Our jobs are very meeting heavy

Genuine question: won't distance learning be harder than homeschooling for the parents? Seems like DL gives you very little flexibility?

I would have thought so too. If i were a busy parent, i would far rather homeschool true academics for 1-2 hours a day (which would basically make your 5 year old an academic superstar), and then hire a run of the mill babsitter to cover the other 6-8 hours a day. If i were a not-busy parent, i would far rather homeschool for 1-2 hours a day and then hang out with my kids for 6-8 hours a day (park, backyard, art projects, baking, etc). I don't know why anyone would pick a school option for their under age 10 kid that involves 5-6 hours a day of virtual learning.

Right now I'm on maternity leave so I was able to monitor my daughter and she barely needed any help for DL, mostly just to learn how to login and how to use the mute button and how to find her materials. After everyone's nightmare story I was expecting to need to micromanage a lot more but she really didn't need my help.

You're lucky. There seems to be a subset of kids in elementary (2nd and up, mostly girls) who can sit for 6 hours starting at a screen and do their work. My kid was not one of them. I spent an hour on our zoom meet the teacher call, which was very well organized, and i was bored and tuned out. Lucky for us, DS went back in person yesterday.

[Anonymous]

My kid is not somebody who can independently play for 6 hours a day so there you go.