What is your 4/5 year old learning in preschool.?

[Anonymous]

My child's teacher sent home homework with math problems, addition, subtraction, greater than and less than. Is this typical? I think it's completely inappropriate. An I just a dinosaur, thinking kids should play and draw and sing? (which they do as well, to be fair).

[Anonymous]

My kids learner addition and subtraction with manipulatives but have no homework

[Anonymous]

I am a prek teacher. Our kids are currently working on counting coins - they can skip count by 10s and fives. We did subtraction and multiplication for much of spring - they could do it with manipulatives and yes, we did send home corresponding homework.

The school I work at is not play-based, though of course we have some of that sort of teaching too. I look at the DCPS scores for kids in higher grades and generally feel like the more we can prep our kids at age 4 and 5, the better off they will be. I can't place any bets that they will learn from a good teacher next year.

[Anonymous]

OP, here. Thanks for the feedback. Do the kids sit still for this most of the lesson? My child is having trouble listening. Don't know if it's related or not.

[Anonymous]

It can be done in a fun way - we skip count by getting in a big huddle and counting in all different ways (loud, soft, high-pitch, low-pitch etc)

To count coins we had a sticker shop today where kids could buy stickers with dimes by counting dimes by 10s.

The hw is the least interactive part because it needs to be efficient and do-able by all families, but is not reflective of the work we do in school.

If the activities are fun, the kids pay attention...

[Anonymous]

Maybe that's part of the trouble. The kids go up to the board and put in the greater than or less than sign. It doesn't sound fun to me at all. Manipulatives would be so much better.

[Anonymous]

Personally that sounds nuts to me. Our 4y.o. is in a play-based preschool, and the topics we have primarily talked about with the teacher involve the social / emotional aspects. They have certainly talked about certain topics - bones, butterflies (with live caterpillars/chrysalis/butterfly in the classroom), etc. - but I'm not aware of a specific focus on those types of math skills, and our child most certainly doesn't get homework. Personally I'd be kind of upset if my child's preschool were sending home homework, as I just don't think it's a developmentally appropriate expectation at this age. And I say that even though my kids likes doing worksheets, but on her timetable and on the topics that interest her at that moment.

I will say though that we have done a lot of that sort of learning at home through fun / games because our child is interested in those topics (side note: the old card game 'War' is great for greater than / less than). So while I don't think it's bad to introduce those concepts at this age, the concept of worksheet style homework in preschool just seems wrong.

[Anonymous]

I don't really understand the hostliilty towards homework in preschool, to be honest. For my class at least, the kids aren't getting hours of drills or anything. They get one math and one literacy hw each night. A literacy hw might be writing down three words in the -at word family. A math hw might be coloring in how many dimes they would need in order to buy something that is 30 cents. I think it is a good thing to keep parents involved - if they sit down with their kids to do 5-10 minutes of hw a night, then they will know exactly what we are working on at school. And while it's great that many parents try to teach their kids at home in different ways, the reality is that many kids don't have that luxury. So the hw we assign might be the only time their parents are really talking to the kids about the concepts they are learning in school. I don't see how a few minutes of reinforcement at home is a bad thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't really understand the hostliilty towards homework in preschool, to be honest. For my class at least, the kids aren't getting hours of drills or anything. They get one math and one literacy hw each night. A literacy hw might be writing down three words in the -at word family. A math hw might be coloring in how many dimes they would need in order to buy something that is 30 cents. I think it is a good thing to keep parents involved - if they sit down with their kids to do 5-10 minutes of hw a night, then they will know exactly what we are working on at school. And while it's great that many parents try to teach their kids at home in different ways, the reality is that many kids don't have that luxury. So the hw we assign might be the only time their parents are really talking to the kids about the concepts they are learning in school. I don't see how a few minutes of reinforcement at home is a bad thing.

Each night? It's preschool. If you want to send homework, why not make it a weekly or do-it-as-you-can assignment? Some nights are tougher for parents (bad commute, other activities, etc.) and they really shouldn't have the added pressure every night. If you want to give nightly homework, why not, "Today we talked about/worked on ____________. Please ask your child about this. Some of the keywords we used were ____________, ____________, and ____________."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't really understand the hostliilty towards homework in preschool, to be honest. For my class at least, the kids aren't getting hours of drills or anything. They get one math and one literacy hw each night. A literacy hw might be writing down three words in the -at word family. A math hw might be coloring in how many dimes they would need in order to buy something that is 30 cents. I think it is a good thing to keep parents involved - if they sit down with their kids to do 5-10 minutes of hw a night, then they will know exactly what we are working on at school. And while it's great that many parents try to teach their kids at home in different ways, the reality is that many kids don't have that luxury. So the hw we assign might be the only time their parents are really talking to the kids about the concepts they are learning in school. I don't see how a few minutes of reinforcement at home is a bad thing.

I don't want my kids to have preschool homework because when they get home I want to teach them measurement while they help me cook, I want to run them around the playground, I want them to learn matching by helping me fold the laundry, I want to put together puzzles with them, I want to practice playing catch with them, and I want to read to them and work on teaching them to read.

I don't want to spend 15 minutes of our evening (5 minutes getting my kids at the table and set up, then 5-10 minutes of getting them to do a worksheet) because the teacher thinks that without that worksheet I'm not involved enough. There are better ways for my 4 year old to spend 15 minutes.

[Anonymous]

My son is in 1st grade and we are already sick of worksheets. Pick a preschool that uses other means of teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't really understand the hostliilty towards homework in preschool, to be honest. For my class at least, the kids aren't getting hours of drills or anything. They get one math and one literacy hw each night. A literacy hw might be writing down three words in the -at word family. A math hw might be coloring in how many dimes they would need in order to buy something that is 30 cents. I think it is a good thing to keep parents involved - if they sit down with their kids to do 5-10 minutes of hw a night, then they will know exactly what we are working on at school. And while it's great that many parents try to teach their kids at home in different ways, the reality is that many kids don't have that luxury. So the hw we assign might be the only time their parents are really talking to the kids about the concepts they are learning in school. I don't see how a few minutes of reinforcement at home is a bad thing.

There's a lot of evidence that this kind of practice in PK leads to lower test scores in the upper grades because kids aren't learning to self-regulate, direct their attention, problem solve etc . . . when they're being spoon fed academics.

[Anonymous]

Wow, honestly, what you are describing sounds to me like what I did in first and second grade. Guess this generation of kids is going to have us lapped.

[Anonymous]

written homework sheets for preschoolers is absurd. They are not yet good at thinking so abstractly, so that adding numerals on a page is not terribly effective learning for them, as it can be for elementary age children who are more cognitively advanced.

My 4 year old's preschool class is collecting rocks, and counting them, and sorting them (by size, by color), and measuring them (how long, weight on a scale, using abacus). These are age-appropriate ways to develop math skills in young children.

Doing worksheets makes some parents pleased, feeling like their kids are getting down to the hard business of academic learning, but it is not the best way for young children to learn. They need to hold tangible things and count them, not write about symbolic representations of them on a paper.

[Anonymous]

I totally agree that homework is a huge burden for preschoolers and their families and unnecessary. what do people think of weekly letter writing worksheets for 4 year olds? And the occasional number or letter writing worksheet for 3 year olds? In class, not homework. Too much?