Hey now. It’s never too early to start having stuff to put on a resume.
My kid (the oldest one) had a kindergarten graduation ceremony with not only a cap and gown, but a tassel. Boy, those kids loved those tassels. He then had a fifth-grade continuation, then a middle school graduation, then a high-school graduation, and finally a college graduation. Quite a line-up of tassels.
The next one they had a little party for kindergarten but no graduation. Fifth-grade was also “continuation” rather than graduation, and they had a pool party. He managed to miss the middle school graduation and cut it so close that it looked like he wouldn’t graduate from high school so missed that one, too. And, possibly because this course created no tassel envy, he did not go to college. He is now making more money than any of the college graduates in the family–which is to say all the rest of us who are over 21.
The youngest got a kindergarten tassel but it was handmade. At his school they called the move from fifth grade both “graduation” and “continuation,” depending on who you talked to. Before the ceremony they had a spaghetti dinner. Real bright.
It’s crazy, it’s like grade inflation. Graduation ceremonies are just a joke. Well, I guess to some people they are very serious but sheesh!
On the other hand, at high school graduation they say “hold your applause” and then they read off 1500 names, after which there is often some applause despite the admonition. For kindergarten there was wild applause at each and every name, no holds barred, and there were only 25 or so names. So the k-grad ceremony has that going for it.
I was the valedictorian for my graduating class in elementary school… I’m going to add that to my list of achievements. Think it’ll help me get a sweet job?
Absolutely. Just add “class valedictorian” under your entire list of academic achievements, and let them figure out what it applies to.
High school graduation marks not only the end of standard minimally accepted schooling, but a passage into adulthood. Whether the student goes on to college or not, almost everyone will start treating him/her as a more mature person, and less like a child.
My daughter has graduated three times, from high school, junior college, and a four year college. Each time I felt that the ceremony was meaningful (and much, MUCH too big and way too long, but that’s another subject).
I really don’t think it makes much sense to have a graduation ceremony unless it’s the end of a course of schooling. I can totallyl get behind promotion ceremonies, especially when it’s a changing of schools, but not with caps and gowns. Let the little kids be little kids. Let them have an outing at a local amusement place, or a party, or something similar. They will have plenty of opportunities to have to sit still for several hours, waiting for a brief moment of recognition.
I remember the idea of eighth grade graduation with only bitterness. I skipped eighth grade and The Administration didn’t allow me to go on the eighth grade grad trip to Great Adventure or walk in the graduation.
My son started kindergarten this year (I refer to it as the “new first grade”) and at the end of K4 last year they had a little ceremony but no caps and gowns, and no diploma. They recited some poems and showed off some of their smarts and said good bye to the school. It was 15 minutes and then we got cake. I really enjoyed it. It let the teachers say goodbye to the kids and everybody get together before heading off to real school (kindergarten here is in the public school system and the kindergarteners are in the same buildings and ride the same buses as the rest of the school).
I got some parents’ phone numbers and didn’t feel like it was a pretend graduation ceremony at all. If it had been, well I would have had to make fake pukey faces.
I was rather surprised at how they did it at my elder child’s school. It was my first experience of a Dutch promotion ceremony as we had just moved to the country.
Classes are combined, so it’s the equivalent of pre-K and K together. At the end of the school year all the kids who are proceeding from the dutch equivalent of K to the equivalent of 1st grade (which is tantamount to starting “real school” from the kids’ perspective) are lined up at the exit door of the classroom. The teachers (there are at least 2 and sometimes a couple aides) pick up each child who is going on to 1st grade, swing them through the air, and fling them out the door onto an inflated jumpy thingie whereupon they bounce. The 1st grade teachers pick them up and dust them off, shake their hand in greeting and then hand them over to their waiting parents. This is accompanied by much whooping and so on.
So instead of graduating they are bodily tossed out of “baby school” into “big kid school”.
Hey I bet my kid had more fun graduating fromkindie here than he would have had there, even without a tassel. 
Woah. Wicked awesome!!
I was pondering graduations last night whilst attending my aunt and cousin’s graduation from nursing school. I think I can only stand one graduation ceremony per year (in their defense, tho, they did a good job of keeping things moving). I had gone to my cousin’s 8th grade graduation earlier in the year.
At first I thought it was dumb, but seeing the “ceremony” (no caps and gowns) it made sense for his school. He was in a class of about 10 kids who had gone though 8 years of Montessori school, and they were the first class at the school 8 years ago. It was a nice “look how you’ve grown, good luck in the future” sort of thing. And all of the 10 kids were indeed going to different high schools.
In my school it would have bene awful to have graduation at any grade but 12th. I went to preschool with some of the same kids I graduated high school with. There’s 3 elementary schools in my district and by middle school we’re all lumped together again. So from kindergarten to middle school you’re never leaving anyone - just adding more kids to the pile.
Now, if we were LITERALLY adding kids to a pile like in the Netherlands, that’d be a different story
I would like to invite everyone to my graduation from tuesday. To be celebrated at the end of work today(5pm PST). Cake and punch will be served.
So you don’t have a problem with commemorating the completion of a grade, it just shouldn’t be called “graduation”? Because that somehow diminishes what you consider a real or legitimate graduation? Not to be argumentative, but, wha?
Back on topic, aren’t the kindegarten graduations more for the parents? I can’t remember how I felt about my wee kiddy graduation,(other than kind of sad because I was wearing the dress my mom was out buying as my grandmother dropped dead while babysitting me)but I think my parents got a kick out of it.
My eighth grade graduation didn’t involve caps or gowns, but it was in some ways just as meaningful (and definitely more fun) as my hs grad. I think it was less about academics and more about leaving childhood behind and moving on to The Magic Kingdom that was the high school that we could see looming in the distance.
Okay, it was only just across Pacific Coast Highway, and it didn’t really loom, as it was only two stories tall, but still. . .
I’d love to be there but I have to come up with a Valedictory speech for my Ladies’ Room Graduation… 
GET WELL, GET WELL SOON, WE WANT YOU TO GET WELL!!!
Our daycare did this. With little caps and one gown (which they shared) and cake and punch. I thought it was charming. Plus I have a phot of each child at five wearing a cap and gown that I fully intend to enclose in every graduation announcement (high school/college) in the future.
Did this mark some huge accomplishment - not on the part of the kids - unless you consider the daycare skills of playing together and singing Wheels on the Bus to be huge accomplishments. Was it charming for all the parents - yep. Did it mark some huge lifechange - yeah. All the parents had tears in their eyes, and I’m sure it was their babies growning up and starting real school.
Any graduation ceremony below university degree level is stupid to my sensibilities. A congratulatory celibration is reasonable, but the idea of a ‘graduation’ for someone who is an undergraduate makes no sense at all. Without a degree you are an undergraduate if you are currently in school or college.
Yes. Because it’s exactly that, the completion of a grade. Nobody will take you seriously if you proffer that you are a kindergarten, elementary, or middle school graduate. You’re being promoted, sometimes to a different school, but it’s not as if it marks a point where you might reflect on your life, choose a career, finish school… As someone remarked upthread, finishing high school in the U.S. marks a rite of passage. You’re now an adult. You can choose to continue your education or you can stop. There is no 13th grade.
Yes. Perhaps for this subset of the population, where virtually everyone seems to think education is a very good thing, and take these things with a grain of salt. But in the community in which I taught, low expectations are constantly tossed at these kids, and the very idea that finishing eighth grade - which you’re supposed to do - is some kind of major accomplishment. It ain’t.
It burned me up when I was over in Fiesta picking up groceries and I’d overhear someone saying that “Bubba graduated” when Bubba in fact was promoted to ninth grade. It ain’t over, Bubba. The one thing that is within your power to make your life considerably easier is to get a freakin’ high school diploma.
I didn’t give kids candy for “being good.” You’re supposed to be good! There’s no reward for just doing what is expected and what you are capable of. I didn’t ignore kids for being good - verbal comments and recognition is fine - but I firmly believe that you don’t reward behaviors that should be the default.
Probably, but that’s the problem. I certainly think finishing thirteen plus years of education, with all of the stuff that parents do to help their kids, is shared. A lot of kids at 18 don’t have the ability to recognize what it took to get to that point, but the parents do. And they have really achieved something, bringing a kid up over 18 years and helping him/her become an adult. Grade promotion is a marker, not a destination. Quite frankly, IMO there’s too many ceremonies that are for the parents and not for the kids… grandiose birthday parties for toddlers, “Sweet sixteen” galas. (I think bar/t mitzvahs are cool, as are quinceneras - they have cultural value, although people can overdo it with these events as well.)
Interesting. I have never heard anyone use the term graduate to refer to simply completing any random grade. In that scenario, yes, I agree that’s glaring misuse of the word.
Same here. We also stood on the stage, facing the assembled parents, and sang a few songs of the era. All I remember definitely is that we sang “Those Were The Days”, and a handful of more musically gifted students played or sang their own compositions. The class before us put on The Mikado, which actually rather awed me at the time, as I though it would be much more fun to do a play than just sing a bunch of dumb songs. In retrospect, I’m sure it’s something which nobody except the young Thespians’ nearest and dearest could have enjoyed. Each graduating class had to play an end of year softball game with the next class behind. Had to, mark you. I was a terrible ball player, so I’d much rather have watched the movie being shown to the younger kids as part of the end-of-year festivities.
Oh yeah!! I just remembered, we also had a member of the class give a mock news cast, in which each of us figured in some prominent news item of the distant future. Two others and I were astronauts aboard Apollo 51. And in the afternoon we buried a time capsule, which seems to have been forgotten.
I can get behind 8th grade graduation, only because it’s not necessarily a 21st century you-showed-up-here’s-a-trophy convention. There was a time when elementary school was 1-8, and eighth was as far as many people went. My grandmother, for instance. So in some school districts, it’s not a new thing.
Blargh, this thread is bringing back Caribbean memories. For half of last year I worked on a Disney cruise ship (yes, that Disney, with the mouse and the pixie dust and the oh my Og, make it stop…) in the kids activities department. The job was a very interesting experience, for many reasons. One highlight for many families was Celebrate the Journey, on the last evening of the cruise.
Yep, these kids, aged between 3 and 12, graduated from playing games on a cruise ship. They wore (and got to take home) alumni tee shirts and mortarboards with Mickey ears. They sat on the stage in the big theatre (I nearly typed “the beautiful thousand-seat Walt Disney Theater,” poor brainwashed me) as a slideshow of photos of the kiddies involved in the activities played. Mickey and Minnie came out, of course, and mouthed to the taped graduation song as the kids clapped along. The parents videotaped the whole thing, and cried.
It was a bizarre ritual. Especially given, also as part of the job, I watched The Incredibles twice a week, which has a scene where Bob and Helen are arguing about attending Dash’s graduation. From memory, Bob says something like: “It’s not a graduation! He’s moving from the fourth grade to the fifth grade. They keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity!” Which always rang true.
Ah, the memories. Of course, I nicked a shirt and cap, so in case anyone ever asks, yes, I have graduated from Disney Sea University. Blargh.