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Elementary School-Aged Kids
Reply to "What should my 4 year old know going into Kindergarten?"
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He should be able to open his own lunch containers, fasten his own shoes/coat, be completely potty independent including wiping. He should be able to transition from one activity to another, be able to get along in a group, be able to focus on something that isn’t his favorite. Don’t worry about letters etc - he will pick them up and they are easy to teach to a kid who can do all the above. [/quote] This except I disagree on letters. Kids should recognize letters by name and be able to produce their sound. Also count to 20.[/quote] [b] They should be able to write them too; or if they don't, be prepared to work with them during kindergarten.[/b] With our first kid, who is now a second grader, we bought into the whole "don't push him in preschool, he'll learn it" thing. Going into kindergarten he knew his letter sounds and was reading a bit but we had not worked seriously on letter formation. The preschool wasn't interested and he was very resistant. He could write the letters but it was a laborious process and not neat at all, and he used the wrong grip half the time. Kindergarten had the kids writing sentences from the beginning without teaching them how to form letters. His handwriting was illegible when he started and it was nearly illegible when the kids were sent home in March 2020. We worked hard with him over the following summer and fall and his handwriting is now passable but still needs work -- we're about to start that Handwriting Without Tears series everyone on DCUM recommends. Clearly we should have started earlier. I remember going into the kindergarten class for the meet the teacher thing in early fall 2019, and all the kids' work was up on the wall, and just about all of them except ours and one other had neat, legible handwriting -- at the beginning of kindergarten. So clearly they had learned at home or in preschool. We are not making this mistake with number 2, who is 4.5 and will go to kindergarten next year. We have started practicing handwriting, reading, and counting. Very gradual, like 5 minutes a day, but it is something, which is more than we did with our first. It is so hard to catch up when you start to fall behind. My second grader still struggles more than he should and I feel that if we'd started earlier he would have built up those muscles sooner and not still be playing catch-up. (Which doing pandemic first grade at home didn't help either, admittedly.)[/quote] You could say this about literally anything in school. I'm thinking about taking Spanish. "Well, you should either know Spanish, or be prepared to work on it!" My kid is registered for Algebra. "Well, he should either know Algebra or be prepared to work on it" Pushing handwriting early can hurt the development of handwriting. Your kid followed a typical trajectory. They learned to write their letters in Kindergarten.[/quote]
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