Thoughts on kindergarten....

My first memory of having any thoughts on kindergarten are from when I was in, hmmm, kindergarten! We were visiting some family friends, whose little girl was not going to attend k.! I felt it important to offer her mother my learned opinon - that kindergarten was wonderful and her daughter should go!

I did learn to read during my kindergarten year and before, but I learned it at home, not at school.

Fast-forward to my own parenting. My oldest son attended kindergarten twice, due to our move from England to Canada, where they would not consider putting him in his academic level. Previous to this, he had also attended preschool from 2 1/2 years old. I don't think we spent a lot of time thinking through whether he should go to either of these, but he was a difficult child (for me), and everyone else did it!

Then my daughter went. So I had one child in regular hours, one half days, and two little ones at home. By the end of that year I was completely fed up with walking children to and from school three times a day, and one day she was only there 1 hr 20 min! At the same time I realized that my daughter had not got anything out of kindergarten that she couldn't easily get at home or didn't need, that I decided my next child wouldn't go.

So we kept Aaron home his kindergarten year. The only formal bookwork he did was a Spectrum kindergarten phonics workbook, which he worked on when he wanted, and finished it by May. The rest of the time he just played and explored.

When Aaron began grade 1 at school, he was very happy. At the first term's meeting with his lovely teachers, they asked, "So he was **homeschooled** last year?" Shaking their heads almost disbelievingly, they said, "He is better prepared than all the other children who went to kindergarten!!"

At that or the next term's meeting, they shared with me a "problem" that perhaps we could work on with him at home. He was so eager to learn that whenever the teacher asked the children a question, he put his hand up! This was hard for the other children, so could we maybe talk to him about not putting his hand up all the time? I was scandalized!

It was hard for me to let him continue the year after that! I don't know that I ever talked to him about that issue but he continued to love learning. The teachers were calling him "gifted" by the end of the year.

Obviously this is not all due to doing kindergarten at home, but also Aaron's personality. However it certainly made me realize that kindergarten at a school was unnecessary for us, and the next son didn't attend either, and neither will the others if we have any say about it! (We do have one child who attends school and others who are home schooled, so this isn't coming from extreme side-taking!)