Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Mommy, when can I go to my school?

Nathan is starting pre-school on 18th January. He asks me every day at least 4 times a day when he can go.

he is so excited to learn "real things" (because, you know, the things mom teaches him at home are somehow not real??!!??)

poor dude - I hope he won't be too disappointed once the allure of being at school wears off.

Sweet.

Your kiddo's excitement is a good indication that you've done a great job of making him feel secure and confident to go take on the world without you. Kudos!

My daughter (2.75) told me the other day that she wants to go to preschool and learn math. I worry about her disappointment as well.

DD5 came home on the first day of kindergarten, wouldn't speak to me, sat down and had a big tantrum. When I finally got her to settle down and tell me what was wrong, she said, "They made us sing the alphabet like we were three!"

I think she was hoping to write her dissertation this year.

I know my son was expecting a lot more out of K than he got. When he had his first evaluation at age 5, the psychologist testing him asked him if he liked his kindergarten class. "No, not really," he replied. "What don't you like about it?" she asked. "Well," he sighed, completely dejected, "they don't teach any chemistry there."

Aculady, your child and mine may be clones. :-)

DeeDee

Madoosa, that is fantastic! Hopefully he loves it and has a great experience. My DD was just the opposite and begged to never go to school again. We ended up pulling her out of preschool. Similar to what doclori's child said, DD told us her preschool did work for babies. If I could find a strictly play based school with zero academics (do those even exist anymore?) maybe she would like it better but then again, I think part of the problem was her lack of relating to the other children in her class.

I see this in my daughter's future, and I don't know what I can do about it. Her daycare provider already spoke to me about my daughter's tendencies to try and opt out of group activities and "look down on" the other children. My wife and I spoke to my daughter about it and got her involved again. I think she expects that preschool will offer educational activities on her level, but I'm not so sure. IF they put her with the 4-5 year old children in a type of pre-k perhaps. The curricula posted by the preschools in my area aren't very specific. I'm going to start visiting schools in the new year, so my daughter can start after her birthday in March. I'll try and get detailed information during those visits.

The alphabet, letter recognition, basic shapes, counting with 1-to-1 correspondence, and number recognition will all be review for her. She's already learning to write numbers and letters and constantly asks me how to spell words. (I got a good chuckle when she finally asked me how to spell "spell". hehe.) At home I'm teaching her about patterns, simple addition and subtraction, and simple fractions. She loves starfall, and her vocabulary is huge, but she's not reading yet. She's getting a calendar for the new year to learn days and months, which she's showing some familiarity with already.

So... is preschool for review, fun, socialization and art projects, and home is for learning? Or should I maintain hope that I'll get help expanding her intellectual development? She's currently under the impression that preschool is for learning. Should I change that impression before she even begins?

I kind of dread the conversations I might have with the preschool reps. I'm expecting them to assure me that she has plenty to learn everywhere I go, and perhaps tell me that book learning is inappropriate for this age group. Will they believe me when I tell them that she asks to play with counting cubes and starfall, and to read her children's encyclopedias?

DAD22: My DD was pretty much in the same place as yours when she got to pre-K, and she loved her pre-K experience. She's an extrovert, so she loved the time with other kids. The learning part of the day was not dominant, and DD's ability was recognized immediately by her pre-K teacher, who found ways to keep DD engaged by enlisting her as a teacher's helper and mentor to the other students... for instance, DD got to read books aloud to her class. The students really admired DD for her intelligence.

And, more importantly probably, pre-K was just a few hours out of the day.

Anyway, it wasn't until she got to K that she found the educational experience extremely disappointing.