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And I'm laughing over the people who are concerned with her being the biggest girl in the class. It's genetics, people, not age, that will make that determination. I was one of the youngest, but always the tallest girl in the grade.
Only to a certain degree. And let's remember that height is not the only way one can be the "biggest girl in the class." A young girl may be very uncomfortable if/when she starts developing sexually a year on average ahead of her other classmates.
My daughter has a May birthday and will only be 5 yo and 3 months when she would normally start K. She has just started her first year of preschool (she is now 3 years and 4 mos) and I realized she is the youngest in her class. I have seen some kids in her class that are almost 4 (but still qualify for the 3 yo-s class) and they look, act and talk in quite advanced ways.
It is amazing what a difference a year can make.
In addition, her first language is not English as she has been more exposed to my native tongue than to English during her first 3 years of life. She speaks well in my language but not as well in English - as her American born and raised father (aka my husband ) is just not that talkative.
In short, I really feel like she is at risk of starting K a bit behind her classmates, having two things staked against her: young 5 and ESL.
She is intelligent, perceptive and seems to do very well on spatial-visual tasks but she is not the most verbal child ever.
Now I know that in order for some to be at the top, others have to be at the bottom - but I'd just rather not have mine fill out the bottom part, if at all possible.
It is possible that my oldest, a boy who just started K as a very old 5 yo (he is about to turn 6) conditioned me to expect "advanced behavior". Even as an ESL child, he has always been unusually verbal in both languages and scored in the 95th percentile on a cognitive test (in English, the verbal section). He entered K reading at 2nd grade level or so and doing 1st grade math, and he seems overall quite advanced for what is being done in K right now.
I have a feeling this will not be the case with my daughter and that she will need more time to mature, academically speaking.
My mother said that she would NOT put her in K at the age of 5 y and 3 mos for the life of her and that schools are now pushing kids to perform too young anyway. I agree with that and if it is still legal to keep the child in pre-school at the age of 5, I am inclined to do it.
My only concern would be that she might end up the biggest/most physically developed girl in her class in the future (she is not petite but not fat either, just taller and bigger-boned, overall).
So my question would be: yay or nay?
What would you do and why?
My 5 y.o. is in 1st grade, she will turn 6 in Nov 18.
She went to pre school at 4, and kinder at 5.
Physical development will catch up at puberty as every individual develop at their own pace.
At went to K at 4 and 10 months. Never, ever considered repeating, won a full football scholarship to a Uni in VA.
They don't start K until 6 in El Salvador.....it really shows in their culture (and GDP), also. However,
Mexico's national policy is that students must be able to read by the end of first grade-----meanwhile, Arizona is implementing a new program that only requires reading proficiency by 3rd grade.
At went to K at 4 and 10 months. Never, ever considered repeating, won a full football scholarship to a Uni in VA.
They don't start K until 6 in El Salvador.....it really shows in their culture (and GDP), also. However,
Mexico's national policy is that students must be able to read by the end of first grade-----meanwhile, Arizona is implementing a new program that only requires reading proficiency by 3rd grade.
Children learn to read over the course of many years, even into adulthood. At forty-something with a graduate degree, I'm still working to develop my reading ability, albeit at a much higher level than a third-grader. So what does it really mean that children in Arizona must achieve reading proficiency by third grade while those in El Salvador must be proficient by the end of first grade?
Children learn to read over the course of many years, even into adulthood. At forty-something with a graduate degree, I'm still working to develop my reading ability, albeit at a much higher level than a third-grader. So what does it really mean that children in Arizona must achieve reading proficiency by third grade while those in El Salvador must be proficient by the end of first grade?
I think this is a great question.
What does "reading proficiency" look like? At what level?
Consider this little excerpt below; WHO should be able to read this (with perfect fluency and perfect comprehension)?
"Bureaucratization offers above all the optimum possibility for carrying through the principle of specializing administrative functions according to purely objective consideration. Individual performances are allocated to functionaries who have specialized training and who by constant practice learn more and more".
"Bureaucratization offers above all the optimum possibility for carrying through the principle of specializing administrative functions according to purely objective consideration. Individual performances are allocated to functionaries who have specialized training and who by constant practice learn more and more".
That sentence makes my head hurt (and, after repeating 3rd grade and later getting a graduate degree - I theoretically should be able to understand that easily.)
My daughter started Kindergarten, against my better judgment, at 5 years, 1 month. I was concerned about her maturity, speech issues, developmental issues (not being able to rhyme words among many others.) I am a teacher. The teacher in me said WAIT. The specialists at the local school said, "she's ready to start." So she did. By November, the teachers there figured out what I already knew - she hadn't been ready to start.
So, why did I put her in anyway, despite my reservations about her readiness? I felt it was better to have her go through kindergarten twice, with 2 separate teachers, than go through Pre-K again. As it turned out, she went through most of the year a little behind most of her peers. Only in the last month did she realize she was behind, and at that point, we let her know that WE put her into kindergarten too early and that she got to do it again. She was ecstatic! When anybody asks her why she repeated, she says, "My mom and dad made a booboo and put me in kindergarten too early." She's in first grade now, so the question won't come up too often.
If you are concerned about your daughter's readiness in that year prior to starting school at 5 years, 4 months, I would look into a Pre-K for kids who don't quite have the maturity level for kindergarten. Somebody had mentioned that earlier. Had I known about such a Pre-K, I probably would have put my daughter in that. But, my reasoning for putting her into kindergarten when I felt she may not be ready was that I would rather her do kindergarten twice with the higher level work than Pre-K.
The other thing that helped me make the decision to put her in kindergarten even when I felt she may not be ready is that this child possesses an extraordinary amount of self-confidence (or obliviousness!) As I said before, she was going along perfectly fine thinking she was doing a GREAT job in her first year in kindergarten until early May when they began talking about what 1st grade would be like. And once we told her that we had made the error of putting her in too early, she felt ok.
It's so hard knowing what to do - i remember the angst well! GOod luck to you!!
[quote=cmacf1;20845206]That sentence makes my head hurt (and, after repeating 3rd grade and later getting a graduate degree - I theoretically should be able to understand that easily.)
That's Max Weber - giant of social thought.
You don't really get to read and understand such things until grad school. Most people never get at that level of reading and comprehension even as adults.
I very much agree with the rest of what you wrote.
Interesting. Used to be that the kids who had May birthdays were some of the oldest in their associated grades, at least that was how it was/is in NYC where the cut-off is Dec. 31 for a given year.
My youngest has a Dec. birthday, so he was actually still three (3) when he started pre-K, four (4) when he started kindergarten and so on.
Personally, unless there is a diagnosed learning disability, I wouldn't hold a child back who was born in May, particularly if she will have already been in a school setting for two years by the time she is eligible for kindergarten.
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