I'm new here - hoping to get some advice for how to handle the situation with my two kids. My son is finishing second grade, and to be honest, is bored to tears. He adores math, science, and history. In math they are doing two digit addition (at home he is learning multiplication and division). In science they are discovering what sinks and what floats, although there is no discussion about why they do so. And the only history they have really covered this year is a bit about the pilgrims around Thanksgiving. The AIG program is once a week....and only if the teacher shows up, which sometimes she doesn't. I've raised him to believe that nothing worth doing is easy, so he is starting to get into trouble at school. Nothing serious - he hasn't been fighting or mouthing off or anything - but his teacher gets very upset when she (frequently) catches him reading books under the desk while she is teaching. When I sent a notebook of extra work for him to do in his spare time, his teacher took it from him because she saw it as a distraction to the other students. After a conference, she agreed to give him more difficult work - and she did....for about a week.
Then there is my daughter, who is in kindergarten. I thought she would be okay for now, since I see kindergarten as nine months of reading and writing practice, and little more. Then she started saying that her homework made her feel like a baby. Still, I let it go because I thought at least she was getting lots of practice on the basics. Then I got her test scores back. As of January, she was already well past the end of year goals in everything. The end of year goal for recognizing and naming letters was 27. She scored a 54. For hearing and using sounds in spoken words, the goal was 18 - she scored a 44. The librarian at school insists that she check out the "easy" books - so she checks them out, never takes them out of her backpack, and reads Junie B. Jones at home.
I guess my question is, what do I do? I don't want them to lose interest in learning. I have them in music, theatre, and karate, which they both love - but there is still the seven hours a day that they spend at school. Having spoken to a friend who works for the schoool, I've been told (off the record, of course) that skipping either of them will be virtually impossible, because the school needs their test scores at the end of the year to ensure proper funding. (Thanks a bunch, No Child Left Behind). So if anyone has any ideas, I'm open to suggestions! Thanks bunches!
