Moving Up

I have mentioned that I have had discussions with Katie and Tyler's preschool teachers and director.  The Director has not been too secretive about her belief that red-shirting is usually best for younger children eligible to enter Kindergarten.  I have weighed her opinions and taken them to heart, which probably accounts most for my slight hesitation about our decision.  So, her suggestion to move the kids up to her Pre-K class in June is welcome.  She intends to have them in her class and give them the same assessments she is giving the Pre-K children she has had in class all year who will all be in Kindergarten next year, and engage them in the same curriculum and see how they do.  She will then give me her honest opinion on what she would do "if they were her kids."  I still kind of expect that she will recommend another year of Pre-K (unless she suddenly has a flux of people wanting to enroll their children), but it will be good to hear her opinion after she gets to interact with the kids in an academic setting and I really think it will be good for Tyler.  He has been on "yellow" and even "red" the last few days in class.  I don't think he feels great with allergies kicking back in and getting over a cold, but I do think he is also a bit bored.  They have a new teacher in their classroom and are reviewing letters that they have already covered and allowing her to get to know the children and it has obviously detracted from their learning trajectory of late.  We aren't making excuses for him (TV and Kindle time - two of his favorite things - were not allowed when we got  the report of trouble at school), but I do think that he is acting out (he has been not listening or continuing to color after he has been told to stop) because he would rather do something new than review what he thinks he already knows.  That is not acceptable behavior - we have told him that listening to your parents and teachers is important no matter what - but I am not overly concerned because I do think being in the Pre-K class in a month will be a welcome challenge.  Their current classroom has very young 3 year old children who have just moved up from the 2 year old room (licensing regulations do not allow 3 year old and 2 year old children to be in the same classroom so once they turn three they have to be moved - something I learned at the childcare center where I work).  There is a huge difference in just turned three-year-olds and almost five year olds (!), but officially the group are all considered preschool.  I don't expect either of them to be as far ahead as the Pre-K kids who have been working all year on learning to read, writing sentences, etc. (they use the Kindergarten curriculum) - but I do know that their ability to recognize all upper and lowercase letters, know the sounds, know quite a few sight words, and understand basic addition and subtraction means that they can handle the Kindergarten curriculum.  It is just a question of if they will be too far behind since the majority of Kindergarten children nowadays enter school knowing how to read, or are on the cusp of figuring it all out. 

Tonight I had a flashback to the days when the kids were younger and it was so frustrating to read to both of them at the same time because they would fight for attention, to turn the pages, to ask questions about the story, etc.  We read a book through and then, as they tend to do lately, they started pointing to words and asking what they say.  I prompt them to sound the words out (not easy when you are not reading a book that is purposefully for young readers - sounding out doesn't make sense on a whole lot of words), and they both do great but are very obviously at different points in their reading development.  Tyler can sound out and decode every word that follows the basic sounds that he knows, i.e. top which sounded out makes sense as opposed to the word two.  Katie doesn't quite have that concept down - she knows the sounds of every letter but hasn't jumped to putting it all together, i.e. she doesn't stop after each word and just keeps sounding out every letter in the line (she also still mixes up m and w, b and d and p in lower case and often first reads words backwards as in pot instead of top - I think it is normal at her age but will definitely keep an eye out).  Katie, though, is much better at writing letters and will ask questions about spelling when Tyler has a tendency to guess at the word based on the first couple of letters and context rather than doing the hard work of figuring it out.  When Tyler would sound out a word tonight Katie would want to do the next one and then get stumped and Tyler would be muttering the correct word under his breath and Katie would get mad and start whining because Tyler answered instead of her.  It was incredibly frustrating, but I whispered to Katie when I put her to bed that I would read alone with her and we would work on it together, and she excitedly said "can, we do it tomorrow?).  There are just some times when they prefer to be together, and others when they need some one-on-one attention and I think this is one of those instances.  Lance pointed out that it is good confirmation that separate classrooms are probably best, and I do think that ultimately it is better for them individually in the realm of academics to not be compared, or be in the same classroom where they see how the other is performing.  So, I'll be anxious to see how they do in Pre-K when we get back from Disney, and especially anticipating what the teacher/director has to say!