Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What is Learned in Kindergarten (at least here)

Our school groups by ability so every classroom teaches at least the state curriculum, but some go further. My son's K class last year was doing addition, subtraction, patterns and numbers to 100. They were also tested on telling time to the hour and half hour and counting money (he had not learned this at home).

All the kids were reading and doing the AR program by the end of the year. They were tested on the Dolch list -- 100 sight words and the kids breezed through it so the teacher gave out the next 100 words. They learned lots of songs and poems. His favorite part was the math competitions they had at the end of the day.

The curriculum was not terribly challenging for my son, but many things were new to him. His reading improved greatly and he started writing little stories. The math moved too slowly so we supplemented with Singapore at home.

Like most of your kids, DS5 taught himself the alphabet, colors, shapes and numbers at around 9 mos. old, read books and started writing at 2, cursive writing at 3, story writing at 4 multiple digit addition and subtraction, etc. He has an amazing memory. He has become our unofficial GPS. He always loved to learn. I thought school would be a breeze. Boy, was I wrong! He just started kindergarten last month and is not doing so well. While, he is starting to play and talk with the other kids, he still prefers to be on his own or playing with the older children or talking with the teachers. He does not like to pay attention and often goes into his own imaginary world. However, just when the teacher thinks he is not listening, she would ask him questions and he is usually able to answer correctly. There are times too when he would completely ignore questions or answer "I don't know." to the simplest questions. Questions that he is more than capable of anwering. The teacher thinks that there could be a "comprehension" or "processing" problem. This is very difficult for me to believe because anyone close to him knows that he is very aware of everything and often remembers discussions by adults while he was playing a few feet away. We were recently surprised when he corrected his dad while his dad was talking to a friend in our language which he does not speak. No one in our family or friends think he cannot fully comprehend but this teacher got me to doubt myself. Is it true? Am I in denial? Do any of you have a problem with your bright kids not paying attention in school and not "performing" for their teachers? He tells me he is scared to make mistakes. How do you deal with this?

Hmm that is interesting about the cursive writing. My DS can read cursive which really freaks people out. I have NO idea how he learned it. I guess most of the letter look close enough to printed ones. ?

Has he been tested yet? Sounds to me like he is completely bored. My son pays almost no attention in school.

My DS can as well. And yeah, I have no clue how either.

i wanted to add to my previous post (about kindergarten being an "equalizer")..that i just don't think its fair to judge our kids' level based on these goals, as many NG are doing great against them too. Sometimes threads that start like this start to sound insulting to what NG kids are doing, and to their credit, its usually much much more than these types of lists, that may be bare minimums. (sorry horrible run-on sentence)..My daughters kindergarten class is reciting poetry, learning about the world, singing songs, doing sign language, and that isn't even on the stated goals. I really never thought i'd say it, but i really like kindergarten.. its wonderfully un-schooly and just what she needed. Now even better that they let her finally pick a "big-girl" library book.

He has been tested a few months ago by a psychologist I got thru the internet. He did not do very well. The doctor and her office were not very kid friendly and she said DS5 was very underscored because he was not focused on the test. The curious thing was that he didn't want to answer the easier questions but were correctly answering questions for 10 yo's. He also was not tested for reading and writing.
When he was 2, an MD had diagnosed him with autism but I don't really see any autistic characteristics. Now that he is a little bit older, I am even more convinced that he was misdiagnosed.
As for boredom, when I brought it up to his teacher, her response was: "bright kids do not get bored".
As for cursive writing, we were all amazed how at 3, he just started doing it without anyone teaching him. To this day I don't know how he learned it.

Mostly agreeing with you Renie1. Reading this thread I thought how important it is to be careful here. These are probably baseline goals, and its important that I don't get carried away with how 'smart' my 4 year old kid is compared to these. DS8 could have done most of them on his head before aged three, but although deemed gifted today, is only mildly so. DS6 who wasn't so far at age three, has blown past him since.

I do agree that comparing a child to a list like this is not helpful from a LOG point of view, though it may be helpful from a will-K-work-for-my-child point of view.

Or perhaps I am just willing to embrace almost anything that supports my premise that DD would not do well in K, since K was one of the worst experiences of my own life and thinking about it still makes me angry to this day. I do recognize that I have a strong bias there. And I am very well aware that she is not me and that if we were to send her to K she would not have my awful teacher.

I certainly didn't post this to insult non-gifted kids. I can only speak from my experience here and like I said before this is exactly what my son is learning in K right now. And again I can only wish that he had the same Kindergarten experiences as some of your kids. Just this morning he cried not to go to school because it's so boring