Kindergarten is not what it used to be . . .

One of the things that I have learned since August is that kindergarten has changed a lot since 1982. I admittedly do not have great long term memory, but if I remember correctly, kindergarten was a half a day of a lot of painting, playing, and singing songs like "Mr. M with the Munchy Mouth". Looking at my artwork that my mom saved from my kindergarten experience, I can see that my teachers wrote my name on my papers for me. This is a far cry from what kindergartners are doing today.

I am amazed at the things I observe in Grant's classroom and what he brings home from school. First of all, kindergarten is an all day, everyday experience without the option of half day kindergarten. Grant's class is reading, writing, and doing math. Everyday they have "Writer's Workshop" where the kids work on writing and illustrating their own books. In "Writer's Workshop" this week they focused on using "fancy" adjectives to make their writing more interesting to the reader. In math the kids are already working on addition. They go to music, art, health, and PE just like the big kids, too. In art the kids have worked on landscape pictures, foreground and background pictures, and primary colors. No, this is not the kindergarten that I went to, but Grant definitely enjoys himself. With this kind of start, I will not be surprised when the day comes when Grant knows more than I do.

Role play. That is Sophia's big thing these days. She loves to pretend to be other people and assign roles to others. Most often she chooses to play "Sunday School". (Sophia absolutely loves her Sunday School class--everyday she asks if it is "Church Day".) She also likes to pretend to be Mommy or Grandma. When she is playing one of these roles, she insists that we call her by the appropriate name and will often try to get out of things by saying, "But I'm Grandma, and Grandma doesn't need to (fill in the blank). She's a clever one.

Sophia also loves to do the things that her big brother does. Lately they have done a lot of writing and coloring together. Sophia likes to pretend to write letters like Grant does. She also likes to try to spell her name. Since her name has two letters, h and i that are in alphabetical order in her name, she often gets a little thrown off. She spells her name "S-O-P-H-I-J-K-L-M". Yep, she's a clever one.