Need advice on extra study for a kindergartner

In My Humble Opinion
1

So today my daughter’s preschool teacher told us, “She is so ready for kindergarten - in fact, you might have to supplement it and give her more to do.” Not unexpected, given the academic proclivities of her parents, but I wasn’t necessarily all het up to label her gifted or anything. Mostly I want her to enjoy school, and have a fun social life along with her academics. But since the teacher went out of her way to mention it . . .

I’m somewhat attracted by the Montessori magnet school, but it is a long way away, and I think with a new baby coming I would have a hard time getting her there, and it would also put a crimp in her friendships with neighborhood kids. I have heard rave reviews of our local school, so that’s good. And we deliberately moved to Cary for the public schools - private is way out of our financial abilities.

So I’m thinking we will send her to the local school, and supplement with our own teaching as needed to keep her challenged. She has been learning some Spanish in preschool, and that seems like a good avenue to pursue, as no language arts are taught until later at the public school. But what curricula are there, and how does one go about teaching them? (I don’t speak Spanish but would like to learn too, and have a grounding with Latin and French at least.)

Also, I’m looking for recommendations on, I suppose, home schooling materials that provide some fun, stimulating learning to fill the gaps of a standard kindergarten curriculum. What have you found lacking in your kids’ school, and/or what extra activities have you found to be enriching for them?

Thanks, from a hormonally-challenged mom facing school registration decisions this week!

2

My suggestions–please note, I’m not a parent, or a teacher and my suggestions are more generic than specific–and in the order I think of them, not order of importance

  1. Dance class or gymnastics or another athletic-type activity
  2. Art class–homemade arts and crafts are fine, or a program if there is one which fits your schedule, budget, and inclination
  3. Language class
  4. Cooking–involve her in age appropriate ways in your own cooking. Let her help plan the menu or assemble the salad or whatever.
  5. spinning off 4, involve her in other household chores–if you aren’t already doing so
  6. Reading
  7. math
  8. Home science projects
    (ETA 9. Church activities or other religious based activities, if appropriate–they may not be available in your location, or may not appeal based on your attitude towards religion).

Note: I’m being vague on 6 & 7, in part because if you aren’t really homeschooling, just supplimenting, doing more out of class activities in these areas may not really help with the part of the problem which is “stimulate her brain in ways which will help her in the long run withoug making her more bored at school”. If or when she learns to read, letting her read at her level seems like a good idea, I just don’t know that you need to promote reading if she’s not already doing that.

3

Kudos for being so involved in your kid’s education. (I’m sure your aware that the limitations of Message Board posting sort of convey a sense that you might be able to lighten up a tad!) :wink:

I’m not aware of any specific materials you could use, but I agree with your thinking that a 2d language would be helpful. I would be surprised if there were any single foreign language curriculum that would be head and shoulders above the others, but feel the important thing is to find one that you do with her. Look for ways to make it fun - go to Mexican restaurants/grocery stores, etc., do cooking projects, find young persons’ books/videos in Spanish, and learn along with her.

Another area I feel is important - that they will not be fully exposed to in school - is music. Many kids as young as kindergarten take Suzuki lessons. At an early age, we decided that any money we spent on music or books was well spent. As a result, we have a wide variety of instruments around the house - including some that no one plays such as drums and guitars. But OTOH, my eldest is studying piano and flute in college, and my youngest is a much awarded basoonist.

Other than that, I’d say the main thing is to read to/with them and tell them made up stories as much as possible. Keep reading even after they learn to read themselves. And just keep exposing them to new things/experiences. Try a bunch of different classes at the park district. Check out every museum and park within convenient reach. Buy neat toys for the household, such as microscopes, telescopes, pencils, crayons, and other art and craft materials. Give them a small plot to garden in. Get them a pet when you feel they are old enough. Teach her to sew, and do small home repairs with you. Learn and enjoy along with her.

4

Music is only not on my list because I failed to double check my list when I was done to find music on it–it should have been number 2 or 3.

5

Well, what gaps do you see in a standard K education? Science? Math? Geography? Fun?

We homeschool. Here’s what we did for K with my now 2nd grader daughter–this took about 2 hours, 3x/week:

Math: Saxon 1 (the K program is really more preK and the 1 probably isn’t ‘ahead’ of K by much)–if you’re supplementing and your kid is good at math, I would recommend Singapore.

Reading: once we had reading down, I just had her read aloud to me. We also started, for fun, Prima Latina by Memoria Press. Latin is one of her favorite subjects.

Science: experiments from Janice van Cleave’s Let’s play and find out about nature–there’s a whole series of these great books. Also lots of nature walks–she kept a notebook and drew pictures of plants, etc.

Social Studies (whatever it’s called): I used DK’s Children just like me and a children’s atlas. Every week we read about a country or group of countries (for example Scandinavia). I would check books out of the library, and we read folktales, made recipes, and so on. We also made a pretend passport and stuck stamps from each country in it as we progressed. Then we did 6 weeks of American history at the end of the year, with D’Aulaires biographies and so on from the library.

And we started Musikgarten, which I think is a great program.

You may want to look into “afterschooling”-- this is the afterschooling forum on my homeschooling MB. You can get tons of great information from these folks, esp. looking in the curriculum forum. They are hugely knowledgeable about all the resources out there. There is an incredible amount of great stuff available, and it’s pretty overwhelming actually.

If you like I’ll message you a list of online catalogs, but I can only scratch the surface.

6

I’d advise being very careful with musical education, depending on how seriously you want your kid to be involved with or learn music.
I’m not a musician or a parent, just had a friend who was a world-class classical violinist who would froth at the mouth when the topic of study of Suzuki violin came up. She felt it responsible for ruining a generation of young violinists. She taught children starting at three and four, and mostly wouldn’t take older students because having to teach them to start over at the very beginning is, she felt, demoralizing for a student and something that almost no kids in her experience were capable of, because of the effort involved and the ego blow that goes along with it.
If you just want your kid to get their hands on a musical instrument and have some familiarity with music, it’s probably not a big deal, but if you want your kid to really learn how to play the instrument and to have the option of playing at a professional level, then please carefully consider a classical course of instruction.

7

How about letting the kid be a kid?

I see so damn much lately about cramming as much into a sprogs day, lessons for this and that, dance, sports, music, organized play dates …

When is the kid supposed to lay on the grass, get green and itchy and look at the clouds? crawl around in the grass and chase caterpillars? chase a puppy around the back yard, giggle at the latest ‘raggedy ann and andy’ book [or whatever books are out now for kids of roughly that age] and just hang out?

If my parents had tried shoving me into anything more organized than the pony club and formal riding lessons [which i admit were actually both my ideas…] I would have rebelled at not having any time to hang out and be me.

Instead I suggest that you take them to some organized music and dance for sprogs programs. THEN if they happen to be interested, see if they may want to actually take lessons or if the interest lays more in going and watching them. Take them to a freaking park to play, and lay out a blanket and read to them. Take them to a kids science discovery type museum once and a while and see if they like science. See if they like cooking, I have a goddaughter who hates anything having to do with food other than to eat it. Let the kids decide if they want to do something. Dont make them into mini-me s.

[can you tell, one of my hot buttons is in over organizing kids time. Let a kid develop their own interests as they are another entity, not just an extension of you and will have their own taste in things.]

8

Such great feedback, thanks guys. I will definitely be checking out the afterschooling site, and thank y’all so much for mentioning music. My husband and I are not into music at all, and so might neglect that if we’re not careful. For all I know, she might be a prodigy, and I’d never detect it!

But don’t worry, aruvqan, I actually share your concern about overscheduling and especially parents who try to turn their kids into carbon copies, or make them live out the parents’ unfulfilled dreams (gag!). I just want to be ready with extra stuff for her, if she needs more stimulation. But I don’t want to do too much organized “classwork.”

For instance, we went for a walk today, and I told her it was windy because a cold front (explained that) was moving toward us and the mixing of the warm and cold air causes a lot of wind. Then she sang a song she learned in school reciting the days of the week in Spanish. Then we watched a street sweeper go by. Then I pointed out that the trees were starting to bud, “thinking” it is Spring, but that it will get colder over the next week and Spring isn’t here quite yet. We also talked about how long it is till her birthday, till our vacation, and so forth, and also how long it will be till the baby comes, and how we don’t know exactly when that will be. If I ever tried to sit her down and formally teach meteorology, Spanish, botany, the calendar, and obstetrics, of course it would be too much, and it would be boring. But there truly is a lot of neat stuff to know, and I like sharing it with her.

I will just need some help with some of it, to be a bit more organized and to know what I’m talking about. As a very visual learner, I have snuck in here and looked up the Spanish days of the week so I can sing with her and help her pronounce them correctly. Also picked up a great phrase to start using: “Lave las manos, por favor.” It might be less tiring to say it in a different language once in a while, since I make the request about eight times a day!

9

God forbid. Everyone’s child is gifted and special and needs organization and stimulation and montessori and magnet schools and needs to get into the best preschool in order to get into the best kindergarten in order to get into the best college, etc. etc. etc.

These people are killing their progeny.

10

There is a difference between obsessing over the best kindergarden to send your child to because it will influence his or her options for college, and thus the rest of the child’s life; and recognizing that (perhaps in part due to the whole No Child Left Behind thing) and various other factors, not all children will be stimulated to the best of their abilities in a standard kindergarden class.

I see little harm in asking for suggestions of both areas of study and curricula for kindergardeners, from which the OP can then pick the best, the most appealing, or the most accessible options so as to have some ideas for stimulating the child’s brain outside of the kindegarden program.

11

We’ve had good luck with Kumon (after the Montessori school left my daughter eighteen months behind her grade level).

12

Let her read whatever she can get her hands on. Nudge her into books slightly above her grade level. Make regular trips to the library.

13

My take on it from the OP is that the teacher wanted to let the Cinnamon parents know that their kid might need extracurricular activities to keep her from getting completely bored in school. That’s valuable information, and it sounds like the OP has a pretty good grip on the situation.

I was fortunate enough to get to start first grade at 5, at an experimental school that let me learn at my own pace. Even though the school had to close a few years later, it got me a good start so that I liked school and always did well. Mom helped by fighting with teachers & schools until they’d let me work ahead of the class, or provide other options to keep me interested.

Without that, I might well have ended up like so many kids I knew (including my much older brother), who were so bored in school from the beginning that they stopped paying attention, caused trouble in class, and then ended up getting labeled as troublemakers, getting bad grades, hanging out with the “bad kids”, dropping out, etc.

UC, it sounds like you’re headed in the right direction. Let her try out different things without pressure, and follow her lead. I’d recommend languages, music / dance, art, library trips, museum trips (especially kid/science museums), etc.

14

I have to chuckle - we are the least status-obsessed, most laid-back people about our kids’ futures. Yes, I want them to love school, learn new things, and be equipped to live full and useful adult lives. However, we are quite content to imagine our kids going to the local technical community college or whatever - as long as they can support themselves and do something they like, we’re good. And I sure as hell ain’t forking over $18K/yr for Cary Academy just for its hoity toity reputation!

So yeah, it’s about keeping her occupied and entertained. That’s why we did preschool at all - Mommy got way too boring all day at home.

Oh, and dangermom, it’s funny you mention Saxon math. My husband was part of a pilot program using it when he was in school, which sadly was dropped later. But he’s so much better at figuring in his head than I am, I for one am impressed with the approach.

And now that I think about it, some biology and veterinary science type stuff should probably be on our menu - two of the child’s favorite shows are Shaun Ellis living with wolves* and Brady Barr dressing up like a hippo to harvest wild hippo sweat.

  • A teacher recently told me that Chloe bumped heads with another kid; upon being asked if she was OK, she said, “It’s all right, I licked my wounds like a wolf, and I’m OK now!”

ETA: reading is so integral to our lives, I hardly think to mention it. But yes, she loves books, and is straddling that memorizing/sounding out boundary right now. I’m really champing at the bit to start reading her Laura Ingalls Wilder, but she’s rather impatient with text-heavy stuff still.

15

I like it pretty well so far, I’m quite impressed with the way they do some things. But it’s a very intensive math program, which is why I said Singapore for supplementary math if she’s bored; it’s fun and moves fast (and it’s cheap!), unless you decide to do it all the way. So it’s an easy supplement.

Well there ya go!

Have lots of fun. That’s one big reason that we homeschool; we can get through everything pretty fast and have lots of time to play and do cool stuff whenever we want. I don’t like to have a lot of scheduling, and this way I don’t have to.

I’d highly recommend that you read The well-trained mind, which should be at your library; lots of good resources there and it’s meant for you to be able to use it for afterschooling too.

16

Unauthorized Cinnamon, I’m not a parent or anything, but I was in TAG programs from first or second grade on, and I seem to remember doing a lot with plants and weather. We learned how to identify different types of clouds, learned about the water cycle (“We’re all drinking dinosaur pee!”), planted beans on paper towels in plastic bags, learned about the different types of plants and leaves, and all sorts of other plant biology things. We went on a lot of nature walks and learned to identify plants by their leaves. Some of that stuff might be beyond her right now, since those units were anywhere from first to third grade, but spring will be here soon. Right now you could force a bulb in a vase of marbles or pebbles, or if you have room in the yard, start planning a vegetable or flower garden. There’s lots of opportunity for learning in the garden.

Something that I liked to do with my mom when I was in kindergarten was listen to oldies and learn to identify the artists and talk about what the songs were about and what was happening in the world when they were written. We listened to a lot of Beatles and Mo-Town and Big Band music. And Peter, Paul and Mary and The Kingston Trio. Whether or not you want your child to know all the words to “Chain of Fools” is up to you.

We also watched Masterpiece Theatre if it was appropriate. I remember really enjoying this Anne of Green Gables miniseries when I was four or five, which led to reading the book with my mom and sister and then reading bits of Tennyson when Mom felt I was old enough. (Third or second grade, maybe? I know I embarrassed the hell out of her in Barnes & Noble when I was still small enough to sit on her lap but old enough to read by shouting about The Lady of Shalott on a poster.) I don’t know how you feel about classic literature for kids, but if your daughter has an aptitude for language, then there are plenty of ways to introduce it without overwhelming her. A lot of Tennyson has a fairy tale quality to it, being set in some High Medieval past and being influenced by King Arthur stories.

To sum up that long paragraph above: If you see or read something that strikes your daughter’s interests, don’t be afraid of learning about it. If she sees something about the Great Depression, then it’s OK to talk about “The Grapes of Wrath” and even read parts of it together. If she doesn’t understand, she’ll most likely let you know. I know I demanded more explanation when I needed it.

Reading over these memories of my childhood, it’s amazing that I didn’t turn out stranger than I already am.

ETA: Oh, Spanish! You can buy magnetic sheets that you can feed through your printer and make fridge magnets with Spanish words on them. I have a Spanish magnetic poetry set, but it’s kind of worthless. Make your own and save some money.

17

This is what I would recommend. If you actually teach her any of the usual school curriculum you’ll just be exacerbating the situation; if she does all the kindergarten stuff now, you’ll probably want to do first grade stuff with her when she actually starts kindergarten, then second grade stuff when she’s in first grade, etc. But learning together about bones, or flowers, or whatever fills the gap nicely. She’ll be happy to be learning about her favourite thing, and of course will also acquire other skills along the way.

18

When it gets warmer you might try planting a garden.

Start to finish, get the soil ready, she picks out what she wants to grow, she’s responsible for weeding, watering, etc. She can learn about what it takes to make her particular plant thrive. She can also learn what happens when it doesn’t work, oh well, try something else.

One of the funnest summers we had was when we planted a garden. I planted tomatoes and lettuce, Ivylad planted cantalope, my son planted carrots and my daughter planted blueberries. I didn’t find out until fairly recently that the reason my husband and I thought the blueberry crop failed was because the kids were coming home from school, bringing friends, and picking and eating all the ripe blueberries!

19

Are there any 4-H or Girl Scout groups around you? If she’s interested in nature, she might really find some great stuff in 4-H. I also second the garden idea – when mine were little we planted runner beans to cover poles making a tepee to play in, or friends of ours planted sunflowers in lines to make a playhouse. Of course, we’re fairly countrified around here.

20

Of all the afterschool activities out there, music is one that is never wasted. It combines so many things – from math to art, rhythm to language arts, social studies and history… if you find the right teacher, that is. Method-book, “learn a piece a week” teachers won’t give you that kind of instruction… but the right teacher? Man. You can’t replace that kind of learning.

My piano teacher (until her death) was a Hungarian woman who had immigrated to Canada from the Budapest conservatory, very late in her life. She had survived the second world war, had been a protegee of Bartok’s and Kodaly. She was probably the most important teacher/adult around during my formative years. :slight_smile: