Starting Kindergarten

"Mamasamba" wrote in message
...
My dd will be starting kindergarten in a few weeks. Does anyone have
any advice on how best to prepare her for it?

There are a lot of picture books about children starting school or going to
school, for example _Spot goes to School_. It might help to read some of
those together and discuss them. They talk about what activities children
are likely to encounter and some of them also talk about the feelings they
might have.

Jayne

Have you been to the school to meet the teacher and check out the room yet?
Possibly set up a tour of the school. The only other thing I did was just to
talk with them and tell them what they would be doing, things they could
expect and so on.
--
Sue
mom to three girls

Mamasamba wrote in message
...
My dd will be starting kindergarten in a few weeks. Does anyone have
any advice on how best to prepare her for it?
--
Margie

"Henry W. Moritz" moc.ishcm@ztiromwh wrote in message
news:sLjXa.58415$Ho3.8804@sccrnsc03...
You know, our local school had a kindergarten camp. It meets at the local
elementary school for a couple of hours in the morning and is intended to
ease the kids into kindergarten, including visits to various elementary
schools, tours, and chances to meet all of the teachers at the school,
including the kindergarten teachers. It seems to be working great for my
daughter. Perhaps your school might have something like this? At the
very
least, I think it would be useful to visit the school, meet the teacher,
and
see the classroom.

Our kindys do staggered entry. Instead of coming the first week, the kids
come in small groups on one assigned day. The teacher does some "testing"
expecially on language skills, gets to know the child, the children come
around and meet all the different teachers, learn where the cafeteria is,
the office, the library and the bathrooms.


"Mamasamba" wrote in message
...
My dd will be starting kindergarten in a few weeks. Does anyone have
any advice on how best to prepare her for it?
--
Margie

Mamasamba wrote:

My dd will be starting kindergarten in a few weeks. Does anyone have
any advice on how best to prepare her for it?
--
Margie


Practice, practice, practice. :-)

Start your morning routine a week or so before the big day. Let her
pick out the backpack and lunchbox, if needed. Go to the school and
look around a bit, if she's never been. Talk about how she'll get there
and home. If your school has a "meet the teacher day", go, meet your
teacher and look around the campus a bit. My oldest figured out the
layout of the school long before I did.

I emphasized to my girls that if they had any problems, any adult at
school, not just their teacher, would be able to help them.

And for you. . .don't be alarmed if it doesn't go completely smoothly.
My second especially was a bit overwhelmed and had quite a few tears
for the first month. It passed.

Good luck.

Lesley

"Mamasamba" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 02:43:36 GMT, "Henry W. Moritz"
moc.ishcm@ztiromwh wrote:

You know, our local school had a kindergarten camp. It meets at the
local
elementary school for a couple of hours in the morning and is intended to
ease the kids into kindergarten, including visits to various elementary
schools, tours, and chances to meet all of the teachers at the school,
including the kindergarten teachers. It seems to be working great for my
daughter. Perhaps your school might have something like this? At the
very
least, I think it would be useful to visit the school, meet the teacher,
and
see the classroom.

So your dd is entering kindergarten too? Mine did attend preschool
last school year and finished bug camp recently. The camp was held at
her preschool and even though there were a lot of new children for
her to meet it was in a familiar setting and one teacher was the same.

If you're lucky, some of your daughter's preschool friends may even attend
the same kindergarten.

I hope to get a chance to visit the school and meet dd's teacher, that
remains to be seen. Haven't heard much from them yet.

You might want to consider going ahead and calling them up. It wouldn't
hurt and you never know, you might not be on their contact list for some
reason.

toto wrote:


Maybe it's different now, but I knew who my kid's teacher was
as soon as we enrolled. Of course we only had one K class
at the time. If there had been more, I think I would have visited
all of the K classes the year before and requested the teacher
I believed fit my kids best. But I don't know if you can do that
now.


You probably can in some systems, and it's probably more
likely in private schools, but I think you probably can't in
most public schools--not because the schools would object, but
because they don't know. At our school, they don't do class
assignments until the last possible minute because they don't
know their total enrollment until then. In fact, despite
lots of advertising about enrolling early, they often have
a bunch of parents show up with kindergarteners to enroll them
the day school starts! Because they don't know the enrollment,
they don't even know for sure how many teachers they'll have.
In two of the last three years here, they've had to open another
kindergarten section to accommodate a late influx of kids *after*
school started. One might ask why they don't just leave a
little slack so that they can accommodate extra kids, but if
they did that, the impact throughout the system would be
substantial in terms of having to pay for more teachers than
they need. Given that budgets are tight, they're not
willing to do that. It's frustrating not knowing, but under
the circumstances I'm not all that sure what they can do about
it that wouldn't have other negative side effects. In fact,
here you don't even know morning or afternoon kindergarten
until the last minute because once they have (relatively) solid
enrollment figures, they send them to transportation to figure
out how to juggle bus routes to determine who gets morning or
afternoon kindergarten! Frankly, I don't know how parents who
have to juggle with daycare manage the uncertainty.
WRT choosing teachers, it's obviously tough when you're
not absolutely sure what teachers will be there. We generally
know *some* of the teachers, but if a teacher has left over
the summer or if enrollment figures dictate adding or losing
a teacher, you don't really know what the options are. Our
school, however, does welcome letters describing what sort
of teacher you think would work best for your child. I've
had good luck with that. They really seem to make an effort
to use all the information they have to make the best placement
decision they can.

Best wishes,
Ericka

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 10:10:21 -0400, Ericka Kammerer
wrote:

WRT choosing teachers, it's obviously tough when you're
not absolutely sure what teachers will be there. We generally
know *some* of the teachers, but if a teacher has left over
the summer or if enrollment figures dictate adding or losing
a teacher, you don't really know what the options are. Our
school, however, does welcome letters describing what sort
of teacher you think would work best for your child. I've
had good luck with that. They really seem to make an effort
to use all the information they have to make the best placement
decision they can.

I am glad my kids grew up before this was a problem. The public
schools they went to had a very stable teacher and staff. A few
people left here and there, but most seemed to stay at the school
for a long time.

As for requesting teachers, their public school was fine with that
for the most part. Different people liked different teachers. I
requested my kids be in one fourth-fifth grade teacher's class and
there were those who hated him. He was rather unusual in his style,
but my kids both think he was the best teacher they had until high
school when my son had three or so others who he believes were
as dedicated. Not many parents did request specific teachers, but
I did for 4th grade for both my kids. And some requested not to have
the teacher I liked for my kids.






--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..
Outer Limits

toto wrote:

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 10:10:21 -0400, Ericka Kammerer
wrote:


WRT choosing teachers, it's obviously tough when you're
not absolutely sure what teachers will be there. We generally
know *some* of the teachers, but if a teacher has left over
the summer or if enrollment figures dictate adding or losing
a teacher, you don't really know what the options are. Our
school, however, does welcome letters describing what sort
of teacher you think would work best for your child. I've
had good luck with that. They really seem to make an effort
to use all the information they have to make the best placement
decision they can.

I am glad my kids grew up before this was a problem. The public
schools they went to had a very stable teacher and staff. A few
people left here and there, but most seemed to stay at the school
for a long time.


At our school there's a core of teachers who've been
there for a long time. I think one of the kindergarten teachers
who just retired had been there more than 20 years. But some
years there's only one kindergarten teacher, and other years
there are three! So she stayed, but the others varied somewhat.
It's similar with the other grades. Living near Washington DC,
the population is more transient than average, so that contributes
to the unpredictable enrollment in the entire county. I don't
feel like our school has a lot of turnover, but even if there's
only instability contributing to half a dozen teachers coming
and going, that's still nearly every grade likely to be affected.
And sometimes the new teachers are the good ones ;-) In fact,
last year when Colin went to kindergarten he got the new teacher
(whom I'd have never known to request), and she was just *perfect*
for him--much better than the teacher who'd been there for years,
even though she was a very good teacher. I guess it's just
life in a fairly transient area.

Best wishes,
Ericka

On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 08:15:48 +1000, Daye wrote:

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 10:10:21 -0400, Ericka Kammerer
wrote:

In fact,
here you don't even know morning or afternoon kindergarten
until the last minute because once they have (relatively) solid
enrollment figures, they send them to transportation to figure
out how to juggle bus routes to determine who gets morning or
afternoon kindergarten!

When I lived in the US (in TN, TX and AL), the kindergartens were all
day. They had a shorter day, but it was all day. Is this just
specific to the areas I lived in or has it changed??

Specific to the area.

My kids did have a full day option, but the town to the north of us
has only half-day (and it is 2 1/2 hours which is less than some
preschools)

All day kindergartens where not available here until the early 70s
and then not all of the schools offered that. It seems to go back
and forth depending on funding.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..
Outer Limits

Daye wrote:


When I lived in the US (in TN, TX and AL), the kindergartens were all
day. They had a shorter day, but it was all day. Is this just
specific to the areas I lived in or has it changed??


It varies from place to place. Actually, even in our
school district, it varies from school to school. I do think
that full day kindergarten is gaining in popularity overall,
though.

Best wishes,
Ericka