Preschool-type learning:
Elijah is also very smart – but he can fool us on that as well. Once in a while in the car, we’ll occupy the time by counting, or singing the alphabet. He often times is just quiet and acts like he doesn’t know things, but sometimes we’ll get him to join in. He does know most of the alphabet song, and can count fairly well too. I can’t just remember how far he can count though. Josephine also loves to sing the alphabet – although without help, she tends to sing, “A-B-C-D-E-I-E-I-O,” and then it turns into a medley of “Old McDonald…puppy, Woof-Woof.” J She can count, but needs some work. Without help, she tends to count, “1-2-3-8”. We also need to start working on coloring/writing. We really don’t do that much of it at home, but I’m thinking I’ll have them start doing that some days while I’m getting dinner ready. Neither Elijah or Josephine can do much more than scribble, but I want to start working on them learning their colors and shapes. I don’t think they know their colors yet, although I’m starting to suspect Josephine does – as when I ask her what color she wants she’ll usually say, “boo” (blue). Last week, she said “boo” and then pointed to the blue bottle of bubbles. I don’t know yet if that was a coincidence or not though.
Always more things to work on, but they’re learning things so fast. Little kids have little sponge brains, and it’s so neat to see! We had talked with daycare initially about possibly moving Elijah up into the preschool classroom in September, if we think he’d be able to participate. Elijah will be 4 in early August, so he’d be one of the youngest. He would be old enough to go to kindergarten next fall, so if I thought he could be ready, we wanted to try. But I’m just not sure yet. Even though I think he has us fooled about how much he is aware of, with him not talking very much yet, we’re thinking at this point that we might wait. Then again, if we wait until next fall, when he turns five (his birthday’s in early August) to start preschool, he and Josephine will both be in the same grade in school. I definitely think Josephine will be ready for preschool next fall when she’s four, and then ready to start kindergarten on time when she’s five. I’d be interested in hearing from others on the pros/cons or how things have gone with their kids being in the same grade, when they were not twins but close in age.
3 comments:
Trust your instincts on when to start them in school. We were hesitant to put ours in preschool as soon as we did but I was going crazy, it was only three hours a day and it turned out to be a really good choice. I was much more relaxed in my parenting with that break and it challenged them. They didn't pick up much academically and I know they are starting K-5 much less ready than others.
I've tried teaching them the ABcs and having them write their names but they just play games with me to get out of doing it and I'm not going there.
I just sit them in front of the Leap Frog Alphabet video and number video each day while I work with Jasmine on math skills. She was supposed to do summer school but we went on our trip instead.
couldnt you put him in preschool and see how he does and if its to much for him then take him out and wait another year? Or else have him in preschool the whole year and if he isnt ready for kindergarten next year just have him in 2 years of preschool?
I'm thinking ours will be in the same grade although Kenson is doing very well. He is an August birthday and Conleigh is February. So I had thought Kenson would probably wait until he turned 6 to start kindergarten which would put him in the same grade as Conleigh. Just from my own personal experience, I know he's leaps ahead of a lot of other kids who start kindergarten. But I also know how hard it can be to be in kindergarten all day when you've just turned 5. It's a lot of sitting and focusing and there are a lot of kids who are ready academically but just really not ready for all that school really requires. To be honest, out of my 7 or so years teaching first grade, I have seen only one boy do well starting school at an earlier point. Every other boy I've had who started school at 5 has struggled with the behavior expectations. But it's hard to say how much of that is immaturity and how much is the kid and the background they are coming from. I also am not completely convinced of where I want my kids to go to school. The school I always thought our kids would go to has adopted a new reading curriculum that for lack of a better word is really intense in the early grades. It's not something I completely agree with and I'm really struggling with how they chose to implement it. They could have done some modifying to make it more developmentally appropriate for K-1. Anyway, if we wait to send Kenson until he's six, it buys me some time as to what I want to do.
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