What are the categories in your kindergarten class?

The skills children begin to learn in kindergarten will last their whole life.
1. Listen carefully.
2. Follow instructions
3. Ask questions if you don’t understand
4 Use your words, not whining or groaning

@YARNLADY Awesome. I would get a solid B+

Categories? All I remember is Ruthie. She had red hair, green eyes, a whisper of a voice and a big blue parrot at her house. I don’t remember any categories.

@Espiritus_Corvus I kept my report cards. My mom has them now. I only remember barricading myself In a corner and reading Indiana jones read-a-long books and juice and naps in the sunshine.

Wouldn’t life be great if each of us could take a nap after every lunchtime?

@Love_my_doggie Absolutely. Some universities have nap rooms and nap pods. It will hopefully spread to all jobs. I used to nap in the schools nurses office.

My preschool & kindergarten was at a church. The day I came home and told my dad he was going to hell because he smoked cigarettes they pulled me out. I don’t recall ever going to church outside of some special social event after that. Thank you dad. I love you.

@RedDeerGuy1 Seems like you are channeling Robert Fulghum. How well did you learn? Maybe ponder this.

@zenvelo I ordered it on Amazon for $7. Thanks.

I think it’s a bit late to improve your kindergarten grades :p

@anniereborn Never too late to learn the basics.

@RedDeerGuy1 I was teasing you by being pedantic with the wording.

Oh, I forgot, “Your right side is by the door and your left is by the windows”. I still don’t get my right and left correctly.

I’d teach the benefits of delayed gratification. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment shows it makes a significant difference in life.

At lunch or snack I’d offer each child one marshmallow or cookie at the beginning of the meal and say if they don’t eat it they will get another one at the end.

My life would’ve been better if I had had more time with the sand box. Also, if the teachers had responded sooner to the semi-dangerous angry thug type in the class, and got him the psych help he needed. Also if they had got someone to sit down with me and patiently spent the time to help me learn to tie my own shoes reliably. My K teachers were basically really good, though. I appreciated that when my mom told them I often didn’t seem to want to go to school, that they told her, “let him stay at home. It’s not like he’s going to miss learning anything.” I would have appreciated less fear in the firefighter visits telling us we should have an escape plan. Overall more of a Montessori and/or genius-exploration-indulgence thing, and less requiring to do the things that weren’t so interesting. Cut & paste has a limit. Most subjects do, and pushing them just builds an aversion and causes stress which puts us into reptile mind which isn’t capable of much learning.

@Zaku You reminded me of a traumatic kindergarten experience. I got a “bad mark” on my report card because I could not tie my shoes. Scarred me for life. :-)

@LuckyGuy I bet! In my case, we had to take off our shoes for class (maybe for nap time or something? I don’t remember why, as that practice was not there for later grades at the same school). Then at recess they would make us put them on again to go to recess, and offered little/no help getting shoes tied. They tried a little bit, but I didn’t get it. I had to invent my own way to tie my shoes, which I still use. I never learned the way most people do it, until a few years ago out of curiosity, but then I forgot.

Actually I think the worst memory from Kindergarten (worse than the girl who put her arm through a glass window and we never saw her again, and worse than having to fight off some classmates in the playground), and worse than not enough sandbox time, and worse than excessive cut & paste, was the conversation “what do you want to do when you grow up”, which it was clear had the veiled cultural threat “society wants you to earn your keep by doing what it values” more than an opportunity, even if they didn’t intend it that way. I think that may have already have been programmed into the minds of the kids by their parents and so on before Kindergarten, because it led to between-kids talk like ”I am going to be a doctor, and earn more money than you” and other fear-and-shame-oriented talk.

@LuckyGuy I can’t tie my shoes too. I just slip them on. Its been 4 years since my shoes have been tied by my mom. I keep them safe and they are well worn.

@RedDeerGuy1 Ha! I just realized that in recent years I have been getting all shoes with no laces, too! I still can do it, using the method I invented when I was 5.

Should tying shoes be the primary responsibility of the K teacher or the parents?

After all, the usual ratio of parents to child is 2 to 1 whereas for a teacher it’s 1 to 20–30 or so.

For those who didn’t learn shoe tying PRIOR to school, what were your parents doing?

Same goes for putting on winter coats. Why is this expected to be handled by the school?

I mean, how difficult is it for a parent to spend a little one on one time with their own child each day instead expecting K teachers to do it 20–30 times each day.

Does anyone else see the sheer logistical problem inherent here?

@Buttonstc Shoe- tying was a pre-requisite for my kids going into Kindergarten at our local public school.

There was much hub-bub at the preschool about velcro shoes not counting.

I don’t seem to recall shoelace tying ever being taught at my kindergarden class. Nor it being required. Nor there being a fuss over laced vs velcro shoes. We didn’t have nap time ether. We were also expected to know how to put on our own coats. Really, by that age you ought to be able to work a shoelace, a button or a zipper.

I remember them talking about making “bunny ears” with the laces.

Tie your shoes

@anniereborn Thanks. I’ve tried to years, but It all comes off as magic. The video didn’t help but to frustrate me. I use the double loop method for left handed users.

I was lucky to have not only a mom but 6 older siblings to teach me.

@zenvelo

That policy makes a whole lot of sense to me.

One of the chief reasons that I chose to teach 3–4th grade rather than K or 1st grade is because I wanted students who were more capable of independence in mundane skills.

The K teacher at the first school at which I taught had the patience of a saint. A very sweet lady who spent an inordinate amount of time tying and retrying shoes all day long as well as the traffic jam at the end of the day from all the kids needing coats zipped, buttoned etc.

That would have driven me nuts were I in that situation and there would have been repeated notes going home reminding recalcitrant parents to put in that extra 5 mins. per day to teach their kids these basic skills and practice them regularly. Thank goodness that all I had to do was remind the boys to tuck their shirt tails back in several times a day and zip up after a bathroom break :)

( the students had to wear uniforms which included blazer, tie, and white shirts. It always puzzled me why clothing mfrs. made the shirt tails so short, compared to men’s shirts. Little boys are far more in need of those extra inches compared to adults. )

Granted, there will always be a small handful of kids that age who just lag behind in fine motor skills and coordination but the best solution for that is repeated practice guided by the parent. Eventually they will ALL get there (unless the parent continues doing it for them rather than requiring the necessary effort on their part.)

@RDG

I hate to break the news to you, but your mother really did you no favors by continuing to tie your shoes for you well into adulthood.

The shoe tying thing was not a huge deal (note I mentioned several more serious issues, including sand box time, and some violent issues). I remember it because it marked a big shift in the helpfulness/attitude of adults in my life. The laces were not the issue, but they were making it one and trying to foist responsibility on me to learn a particular way of tying them to satisfy their own arbitrary requirements, after having had me untie them. It only lasted a few days at most before I solved the problem by inventing my own way to tie my shoes, but the weird rule / unhelpful-teacher combo did make an impression.