Septmember:
cut, paste, color fall foliage
letter sounds worksheet, handwriting practice
color patterns

October
cut, paste, color pumpkins
letter sounds worksheet, handwriting practice
shape patterns

November:
cut, paste, color turkeys
letter sounds worksheet,handwriting practice
colored shape patterns

December & January:
cut, paste, color snowmen
letter sounds worksheet,CVC words, handwriting practice
number patterns

February:
cut, paste, color hearts and groundhogs
letter sounds worksheet,CVC words,handwriting practice
Eureka!!! addition. 1-9, Sums up to 10. oh.

cut, paste, color
cut, paste, color
cut, paste, color
cut, paste, color
cut, paste, color
cut, paste, color
cut, paste, color
cut, paste, color

I feel your pain.

Eeek ... I'm starting to think DS's kindergarten experience was absolutely wonderful.

thanks Kriston an MoN. I feel better knowing I am not the only parent pained by this. The parents of the kids in my ds' class don't seem to mind!

And MoN - ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are at a new school since January and just got our first paperbag puppet (for this school) yesterday!

Ground hog paper bag puppet!!

color,
cut,
paste to paper bag
repeat

(LOLOLOLOL)


at least my ds is not as frustrated as I am. yet. I don't know how we are both going to make it until June.

yes, yes

color, paste, pour, go home do times tables
color, paste, pour, go home and read a book
color, paste, pour, go home and do a science experiment with sister

it's all about balance

Ours are all about cutting out the lines of silly little songs that have been printed out in the wrong order and then pasting them on paper in the right order. Cut, paste, then color, in that order.

*sigh*

I keep wondering what we're going to do next year...

I'm impressed you got addition in there, with sums through 10, no less.

thank you. at least we got a tiny bit of improvement from the first school. less kids(20 insitead of 25), less discipline required (red-yellow-green card system was stressing ds out even though he usually stayed on green) AND thankfully, addition.

The first day they introduced the new unit Ms. Regular Teacher was out sick. My ds came home beaming and reported that the substitute let them do math!

"Mommy, Mrs. Sub gave us addition and subtraction! I got them all right, even the hard ones. This is the best day of my whole life!"

It is the little things in life that warms a mother's heart.

Oh nooooooo!!!!!!! Dd5 will be starting kindergarten in the fall, and I'm already stressing about it I'm having flashbacks of Ds11's kindergarten teacher "expressing concern" that Ds didn't know the "B" sound and that "He might not be ready for kindergarten"........I had to bring in worksheets that he had done at a year old to prove to her that he DID know every single sound. She STILL wasn't convinced and didn't realize he was completely tuning her out....Oh the memories!!! I do know what my daughter is capable of but am not too sure if I want to spend the $$$ on IQ testing, though I know that is what will help our case....Ugh....Husband will probably freak if I do it lol Wondering if any of you showed any of your childrens work from home and if that helped get any type of acceleration??? I know I should probably just talk with g/t coordinator, though she doesn't accomodate until 3rd grade ( unless I guess, "extreme cases"...Whatever that means!)Do any of you ever feel like you are ALWAYS asking for more and feel like you're being a pain in the rear??? Our school has accomodated Ds9 so much, and I guess I'm just feeling like I shouldn't be so greedy, though I know it's the right thing to do for my Dd....Sigh, why does this advocating stuff always seem so tiring???

Your DD, it sounds like, is an "extreme case" probably! But, I totally get what you mean about being a pain in the rear. Our school was so good with DD8 about early K entrance and then subject acceleration and then grade-skipping, and then I went and asked them to let DS6 skip K, and I feel like they've probably had enough of me! To be fair, though, they've never shown any annoyance with me and we've never had to fight too hard. Still, my DS6 is able to do math 1-2 years above grade level and is reading at a mid-3rd grade level, and for some reason I'm hesitant to suggest subject acceleration for him, even though I did for our DD. It's not that I think he can't handle it socially since he routinely plays with kids several years older than him and he clearly needs the challenge, it's really that I hate always having to ask for more. I feel like a bit of a chicken just asking for in-class accomodations for work in his free-time (because he gets all his other work done so quickly)!

I'm impressed too! In our class they are still working on counting to 30

DS5 enjoys (mostly) the craft projects and his teacher now has him and another 'advanced' boy doing enrichment after recess while she does phonics group stuff with the rest of the class. I believe she gives them 1st grade math/comprehension stuff. Still way below him but at least it's something!!

OMG! I forgot about those! DS came home with so many in K and I (and he) couldn't take it anymore.

i don't want to put down typical development in any way.. but around here we just got to counting to 12, and we're still working AB patterns. I asked the teacher for more differentiation, which is the big buzz word around here, and she vindictively decided to punish both me and DD5 by sending home enormous quantities of work. From one 2 second worksheet a day to 5 or 6 sheets, plus a book "project" like making a diorama, etc!! She has to do the regular homework on top of the new stuff. DD and I are both bewildered!
irene

That is ridiculous renie! I would talk with the teacher or principal about what the purpose of the homework is exactly. If they know that the child knows the material, then why do they have to do it? And if they have other homework replacing it then it definitely should not be necessary. They shouldn't be punished because they are gifted. It is hard though, when you ask for more and they give you more you can't complain too much. I would just space out when you hand the homework in and maybe let them know that while the work she is sending home is appropriate, that since she is still 5 (or however old she is) that you don't want her to spend more than 20 minutes on homework (or whatever amount of time you feel is appropriate).

My DS5's first grade teacher was confused as to why his sentences weren't more elaborate and creative when he had to write out spelling word sentences. I told her that while he writes good, his hand is still 5 and he tries to find a short sentence because is well aware that the more elaborate the sentence, the more writing he has to do. I remember back in October when he got the word "because" for spelling word and said "oh no...this is going to have to be a long sentence because I have to explain something." And a few times he has still gotten some busy work (looking up and writing out definitions) Not sure the purpose of that, but didn't want to complain too much. Thankfully DS really doesn't complain about it and doesn't usually get too much busy work.

Are you serious?????? She is helping your child by handing off more challenging work to do at home? There should be things that can happen IN CLASS for children who are ahead.

yes the teacher feels challenged by us now and we feel she is trying to make us just regret asking for the work. I actually didn't even directly ask for anything, just shared what my DD said, all words from her and not me. The principal is now involved so i think it will be eventually straightened out. But right now i'm just dreading any interaction with the school, which makes me so sad. My DD7 goes to the same school and has always got great teachers and we just got really unlucky this year with K for my DD. I wanted to get off to a great start. We were placed with this teacher because she is supposed to be good with GT kids. I hope we have better luck next year.
irene

mnmom23 and Cecilia,

congrats on your advocacy efforts for your 1st kids.

Even though you feel like you are asking for more and more from the schools, this will be the first time asking for your younger children. Does looking at it from that perspective help any?

sound pretty typical sadly. ds was tested yesterday to see if he can whole grade skip into k. i'm totally bugged about it because at his testing they basically made it sound like in order to enter school a year early so that he could color, cut, and paste....he needed to be able to read, write, and add (which he can, but it still sounds dumb.). k is mandatory here, or i would just skip it. whether he goes next year, or in 2 years (when he is supposed to go)...there is NO way making leaf patterns all day is going to go over well.

i'm sorry for your struggles renie. we had problems with our 6 year old in k last year. there was no differentiation in the classroom, the principal supported the teacher and would not help us, and we ended up homeschooling our son just to get him out of there.

We had a great K year because we had a great teacher. Here are a few easy things she did to make it fun for the high levels.
Hopefully you can suggest some of these ideas to your teacher, if you think they would be good a good fit.

When the children were practicing writing letters, she would quietly suggest to the higher level kids the idea to see how many, or the longest, words they could write that begin with that letter. And for sight word practice she would give them chances to write words that rhyme with the word. When they moved to sentence writing she would challenge them to edit their work and make a longer more detailed sentence.

For the students would get done fast on the craft/scissor projects, she would have them write as many detail words they could think of to describe the craft. I.e.. fuzzy, brown, sticky

She did similar stuff when doing math & numbers, many times my child had more work done on the back of her paper than on the front because she was given the option to do the easy, the hard, or both. ex. On an addition facts worksheet, she would be given the choice to keep doubling the answers on the back and see how high she could go. My DD loves a challenge!

The children were never forced to do the harder things but they were always given the opportunity, which is important.
Another plus was that we were free to substitute or alter homework as long as we kept to the subject area and basic idea for the task.

Differentiation should be mandatory in every class, and especially in K, because it has the widest range of levels. Some kids don't know their letters while others can read and spell.
All it takes is a little bit creativity and most basic assignments can be tweaked for the more advanced student.

I think the biggest problem is that many people believe that K is supposed to be fun, but they don't realize that the word "fun" to our kids, means to actually use their brain!

I wish you luck and send lots of hugs to those of you who are suffering!

eastnWest, Hey! I'm a little impressed they did so much coloring! Okay...sarcasm intended!!! The education system is broken. All these little kids are paying the price, and the gifted ones more so! I'm so sorry about your exerience...it seems too be a more and more common story! What happened to unit studies on fascinating themes like dinosaurs and weather? I remember kindergarten used to be more fun. The halls used to be decorated like the ocean one month or a jungle the next. That is certainly not our experience! And, if you are someone out there who has this...treasure it while it lasts!

Floridama, That's the way school is supposed to be!! I'm glad your child gets to start their school career that way!

crazydaisy -

Thank you for your support! Helps not to feel so alone in this. The other parents in his K class seem oblivious to the mediocrity. I need to figure out how to make it better for him in 1st grade.

Afterschooling has been hard to do with me getting home from work late.

My next project is to figure out how he can have fun and be learning this summer while he is at day camp.

- EW

Just wait until 2nd grade when it is test after test on Adding and subtracting UGH UGH

That is exactly what DS's kindergarten was like last year, too. We were very very frustrated, particularly since we had just moved to the 2nd highest-rated school district in the tri-county area specifically for the schools.

Our kindergarten teacher gave him a differentiation plan that included participation in the lexile reading program, his own books, and eventually his own math/spelling/language arts. However, the differentiation was way too chaotic in a kindergarten classroom. We also considered the school's recommendation to move him up to a 1/2 combo, but the biggest problem was that he was still far ahead of 2nd grade in some areas yet still had the gross motor skills of a 5 year old boy and the fine motor skills of an advanced-5 (but certainly not 7!).

We quickly discovered that the K schoolwork was a joke (worse than his old Catholic preschool), the "average kids" were surprisingly far behind (can't recognize an "I"?? Can't count to 20?!?!?), there were tons of immaturity/behavioral problems by other Ks that always diverted the teacher's attentions, and that he could do so many more productive things with his time outside of that classroom.

We pulled him in January to homeschool him (through a charter, with tons of workshops and co-ops), and we never looked back.

We were very lucky that DS was SO far ahead of the curve that they had to differentiate. Unfortunately, with 24 in a class at that age, the teacher's time is stretched so thin that we found there isn't a whole lot they can do. Our teacher and principal were extremely accommodating to our wishes (said they've never had one like him before, and had the superintendent involved for us, too), but at the end of the day there just wasn't anything that worked well.

I truly hope you find some answers. It is so heartbreaking when the solution isn't right ahead of you, but keep persevering, talking with the teachers, and finding enrichment programs. and hopefully it'll all come together soon.

I really shouldn't post this because I fear it sounds like bragging and maybe it is, but not in the let me rub it in your face, but more ... wow, thanks for all the examples of the horrors your kids are living through, because it really shows me how lucky we are to have found the school DD is going to.

All the kindergarten curriculum that everyone is talking about: cut and paste, color, learning ABCs and counting to 30, etc ... my DD did in her 3 yr old class, but all in Spanish so at least it was new to her. I'm not sure exactly what the curriculum is for kindergarten but it has to be somewhat intense if by 1st grade they are working on spelling words such as Baccalaureate and writing expressive stories equal to 3rd grade. Plus, still learning in Spanish for half the day and English for the rest.

DD was doing all of the Kindergarten curriculum except cutting things out by the time she was 18 months and even at 3 she would have been bored to sit there doing it over and over in English, so I can't imagine her being stuck with this in Kindergarten.

ugh is right! I am not looking forward to that.

gratefulmom,

I am just now reading your post. Thanks for your support.

I am glad you found a solution for your ds and I am hopeful we will create a good fit/situation for my ds.