"No" playtime in MoCo K's?
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Anonymous
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DD just started at a Title I school in MoCo. Other neighbors say positive things about the school and have their kids there so we are giving it a shot. Question for those in other areas of the county especially - how much non-recess play time is alloted in K each week? DD's class apparently has some toys in the room but they only get to play with them for a little while one day of the week. (To me gym, music, art, etc may be fun but those are not true play-time since they are teacher-directed.) One day a week for playtime seems WAY too little playtime to me for K.
Interested in trying to get a feel for whether this is likely due to the population of the school making academics much more high stakes or whether it is this simply normal for the county? |
Anonymous
| DD is in a TI school now in first grade. They have plenty of play time which is known as free time. |
Anonymous
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Our local school principal told us there was no recess or outdoor time in the K.
And he was shocked when we opted out to go private. |
Anonymous
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OP, what do you consider "play time"? Is recess play time? Are centers play time?
And, if you define play time as "time when the teacher is not telling them what to do", why do you think that your kindergartener needs to get this in school? Is this something that your kindergartener can get at home? |
Anonymous
Which Maryland public elementary school system does not have recess in kindergarten? Is this a full-day kindergarten? |
Anonymous
Not OP, but our private school has free play for kindergarteners each day. Free play at this age is developmentally appropriate, and unfortunalely often lost as the school system accelerates learning by a year (I.e., what we learned in first grade is now taught in kindergarten). A lot of kids handle the lack of free play just fine. But a lot of kids don't. http://www.thestrong.org/sites/default/files/play-studies/Crisis_in_Kindergarten.pdf |
Anonymous
No free play in school does not mean no free play. It just means no free play in school. |
Anonymous
| OP here - I mean time to play with the toys in the room like dress up it kitchen etc. I am sure some of the academic oriented activities / centers may be fun but that is not free play. And I do not mean recess since that is really a very different kind of play from indoor play with toys. |
Anonymous
Really interesting paper. Thanks for linking it. To my mind, MCPS (and I'm sure many other school districts) doesn't care about educating the whole child. In later grades the emphasis should shift to being more academic, but even older kids need downtime to rest, reflect, talk to friends and maybe get a jump on the night's homework. They don't get it in high school. The instructional day starts insanely early and they go straight through with no breaks other than lunch. At my DC's previous high school he had a slightly longer day at school but always had a free period during the day. It was immensely helpful. I really wish they would implement something similar at his "W" high school in MoCo. I was told that will never happen because it's too difficult to manage that many kids if they aren't in class. |
Anonymous
| If it's a title I school, does that mean the typical class size is smaller? If so, you'll have a better chance at at least getting recess. |
Anonymous
I've done public and private with my kids and I've never seen this. In fact. Never saw it in any of the privates I toured two years ago when I was deciding on schools for my now first grader. This is really preschool and maybe a little Pre k level activities. |
Anonymous
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OP
8:01 - what have you never seen? A class with so little play time? Or a class that actually regularly has play time? 7:56 - yes class is about 20 I think and they do get recess but my concern is that it is a) not enuf to suffice since it is only 20 or 30 minutes and b) not the same as indoor play. Trying to understand if this is common tho for MoCo K as I think about how to ask the teacher about it. |
Anonymous
A class with playtime, dress up center and/or kitchen. That's just not kindergarten. In pre-k I did see kitchens, but they were used for before and aftercare time, not class time. |
Anonymous
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"A class with playtime, dress up center and/or kitchen. That's just not kindergarten. In pre-k I did see kitchens, but they were used for before and aftercare time, not class time. "
If it's normal then I will grudgingly accept it as simply wildly different from when I went to K (admittedly 30 years ago). Since it's a Title I school though I'm on edge to try to make sure she's not getting short-changed compared to other schools in the county and so me lack of any real indoor playtime at 5 years old just seems wild. I could also understand it more if K were still a 1/2 day program, but DD's at school for about 6.5 hours. |
Anonymous
| ^ "and to me" |