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To the best of my memory my parents did not prepare me at all. It was just like my entire life I stayed home and did stuff, went to the play ground, then suddenly BAM I have this new activity I have to go to every day for a longer period than I had lived up to that point.
I figure there has to be better ways to prepare child than that. So how were you prepared and for those with children how have you prepared them?
Actually it was my sister and brother that prepared me. When I was like 3 or 4 they had a "school" for me in the basement (us children's playroom). They were very hard on me! I was yelled at when I got something wrong! It's probably why I was reading like 6th grade level books in kindergarten/first grade and did so well in school (at least part of the reason).
I’m a firstborn but my mom had been a schoolteacher so I had preparation, tons of confidence & couldn’t wait to go to school. I am also hyperlexic & had been reading since I was 2 & was really confused as to why I had to wait until I was 5.
My mom said I ran to get in line & never looked back.
My sister started the next year & cried every day for that first month. Obviously we were raised just the same & are less than 2 years apart in age, so some of that has to depend on the kid.
Preschool...and encouraging education at home. I was a very bright kid and reading chapter books in kindergarten as welll as writing in cursive by 1st grade. My mom always said it was show me something once and a week later I would have it mastered.
For my son we took a similar approach. He was in a daycare / pre-k program and we encourage learning at home. It worked and he succeeded. He’s going into 3rd now and thriving despite us not forcing him to do things before he’s ready. I am trying really hard not to create the super type a personality I have. I want him to be happy and not be a constant overachiever who always wants to do more rather than being happy with where I am. Sure it’s great for career progression but happiness is more important in my opinion.
I was the youngest child in our family, so I had been prepared by watching my older siblings go through it. I was anxious to go to school.
In fact, when I was still in my pre-school-aged years, I apparently snuck out of the house, rode my tricycle the 5 blocks to the local K-5 school, walked in the door, and announced "my name is Stripes, and I'm here to go to school".
From what I was told they marched me around from classroom to classroom until someone recognized me so they could call my mom to come get me. In the interim, she had been rallying the neighborhood moms to look for me because she figured out I had disappeared!
For me? A little bit of nursery school. It met maybe for a few hours thrice a week? Because it was so irregular in schedule, I never felt comfortable there - couldn't seem to understand when I would go, why I was there. But I was eager to go to the big kids' school, and since it met for 5 mornings a week, it felt like a regular schedule, and I was happy and comfortable there. No preparation other than being taken there.
For my own first child, we parents on the block held our own special ceremony for all the kids who were going to kindergarten, before the first day. We made it feel special for them. All of the kids had attended some kind of nursery school program, all had learned their letters and numbers before they went. Nowadays, kids are expected to learn to read in kindergarten, so plopping a kid down into kindergarten, without having taught him his letters and numbers and colors before he goes, is not a good idea.
I don’t recall other than I refused to enter the classroom, stood at the door and quietly cried. I had major School Phobia and could not be consoled for days, weeks, I don’t know. I do know that my siblings at the same school tried to coax me into the class, but my oldest sibling ended up taking me home multiple times. Even neighbors attending tried, cajoling, promises, candy, but to no avail. I eventually entered. In circle time for the first time...I sat quietly...and wet myself ...and others in the circle. Don’t recall the resolution, but I grew to love school and my teacher and only missed due to illness all the way through graduate school (I didn’t know you could cut class even at that level. LOL) I’m the member of the family who has moved the furthest away and who has traveled extensively out of the country, except for my brother who was career Navy...Go figure.
I do recommend that parents prepare their little ones. Truthfully, though, parents seem to have a harder time of it. I can’t tell you how many moms I’ve seen crying outside the kindergarten door.
The first day of kindergarten, I arrived at my NYC school with a liverwurst sandwich on rye and fluent in German — spoke no English. We lived in a section of the city where this was not uncommon. I had others to talk to; and I shared my sandwich with another girl who did not have a snack. Our teacher only spoke English. As we were leaving to be picked up by our mothers outside, I spotted my sister — who was in 3rd grade — running in the hallway and chattering in English with other kids. I did not speak English and later that day I asked her why she did not teach me English. She said one language was for home and the other for the world; and now that I was out in the world I would learn. She was sitting on the toilet and I was in the bathtub during this conversation. I remember that day and that conversation so clearly.............. My sister died in 2004 unexpectedly and I miss her every day.
To the best of my memory my parents did not prepare me at all. It was just like my entire life I stayed home and did stuff, went to the play ground, then suddenly BAM I have this new activity I have to go to every day for a longer period than I had lived up to that point.
I figure there has to be better ways to prepare child than that. So how were you prepared and for those with children how have you prepared them?
My parents did nothing to prepare me, but I didn't need it, as I prepared myself. I began teaching myself to read and do arithmetic when I was two and I was reading high-school age literature, by age 5. Kindergarten was a big cultural shock for me at first. Here I was one day, surrounded by this noisy bunch, most of whom were thumb-sucking babies. They even demanded that we all lie down on our little blankets and take a 20-minute nap. It was an ordeal, but I learned how to make the most of unfavorable circumstances.
No academic content was allowed to be presented in the Kindergarten classroom and I was threatened with expulsion, if I was caught one more time, teaching a couple of friends how to read. But in the first grade, we had a disciplined and demanding teacher, who got us (and I mean, all of us) quickly on the pathway to learning. I was not allowed to float along on what I already knew, but had to show a steady increase in knowledge.
Nursery school was shorter days than school, and there were naps in the middle. It was a place where you learned to take instruction, work on little craft projects, and get used to a structured environment. That was the only preparation for real school, starting in kindergarten.
I don't remember the first day of kindergarten, but after that, the first day of first and second grades, I was one of those kids who went through a lot of anxiety, worrying about how I'd find the new classroom. Charles Schulz actually did a Peanuts cartoon about that, in which Charlie Brown could barely cope with the first day of school, lol. It was nice to know I wasn't the only one.
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