Water parks and dinosaurs
By necessity this needs to be a short post...it's late and this is officially crunch time for my almost-kinda-sorta-steady gig, job-wise.
Today was a homeschool playgroup day, and we met at a water park several miles away. I wasn't sure what "water park" meant, but quickly learned that it's a regular park with a large, concrete paddock in the middle, with various fountains spewing cold water for the kids to run through. We got there at the allotted time, and nobody showed up for an hour. I was ready to write it off before someone finally arrived, and then everyone seemed to show up. So the kids got a 2 and a half hour recess, running and shrieking through the water and climbing the jungle gyms with 5 or 6 families worth of kids while I talked to the moms of the group. They had interesting tales to tell:
One of them used to be an elementary school teacher just a few months ago in another state. When she moved, she pulled all of her kids out of school and started homeschooling them. Why on earth? "School is nothing like you and I remember it," she reports. "We used to color, we used to fingerpaint, the lower grades used to be a gentle introduction to school. Now they have to teach to the test all the time, and there's no time at all for any of the fun stuff. It's just gone." Another mom agreed, citing that her kindergartner used to come home with piles of homework. Learning to read is now a requirement for passing Kindergarten.
Another related her experience: "This isn't kindergarten anymore, at least not in our neighborhood," she says. "He (the son) went for 3/4 of a year and I helped in the classroom. The entire day in the classroom was structured, including who you could sit with during snack time and who you walked to the playground with. There was a lot of pressure to accomplish reading goals, almost no time for art, and the teacher was SUPER stressed."
Another says her 3rd-grade nieces at school were told that the teachers "didn't have time to teach the multiplication tables," and that the parents would need to teach their children their multiplication. The teachers needed to focus on testing.
Pardon my French, but what the hell is going on out there?
And finally, I saw an ad for this and thought of a certain young man who might explode to go see it: Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience
Today was a homeschool playgroup day, and we met at a water park several miles away. I wasn't sure what "water park" meant, but quickly learned that it's a regular park with a large, concrete paddock in the middle, with various fountains spewing cold water for the kids to run through. We got there at the allotted time, and nobody showed up for an hour. I was ready to write it off before someone finally arrived, and then everyone seemed to show up. So the kids got a 2 and a half hour recess, running and shrieking through the water and climbing the jungle gyms with 5 or 6 families worth of kids while I talked to the moms of the group. They had interesting tales to tell:
One of them used to be an elementary school teacher just a few months ago in another state. When she moved, she pulled all of her kids out of school and started homeschooling them. Why on earth? "School is nothing like you and I remember it," she reports. "We used to color, we used to fingerpaint, the lower grades used to be a gentle introduction to school. Now they have to teach to the test all the time, and there's no time at all for any of the fun stuff. It's just gone." Another mom agreed, citing that her kindergartner used to come home with piles of homework. Learning to read is now a requirement for passing Kindergarten.
Another related her experience: "This isn't kindergarten anymore, at least not in our neighborhood," she says. "He (the son) went for 3/4 of a year and I helped in the classroom. The entire day in the classroom was structured, including who you could sit with during snack time and who you walked to the playground with. There was a lot of pressure to accomplish reading goals, almost no time for art, and the teacher was SUPER stressed."
Another says her 3rd-grade nieces at school were told that the teachers "didn't have time to teach the multiplication tables," and that the parents would need to teach their children their multiplication. The teachers needed to focus on testing.
Pardon my French, but what the hell is going on out there?
And finally, I saw an ad for this and thought of a certain young man who might explode to go see it: Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience
posted by Kelly at
1:32 AM
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