As many of you know, Preston and I were not planning on having Ashton enter Kindergarden for another year. He's got an August birthday and is by far the youngest compared to other kids in school. When we got on the Circle Christian Homeschool bandwagon in order for the kids to participate in the Friday enrichment days they had to be at least in Kindergarden. For selfish reasons I know (one day off!!) we went ahead and enrolled Ashton in the program.
While the program is awesome, and not anywhere near "over his head", I do believe that this is just our "practice kindergarden year" with Ashton and we plan to REALLY do Kindergarden with him next year.
Right now he is doing school with us everyday, especially in bible, history, science, art, math, phonics pages and handwriting. The reading portion though is where his immaturity really shows. He gets thru about 5-6 words and he is just DONE. Doesn't want to do it anymore, etc. It's not just a defient attitude either, its a, this is just really too much for me this soon. So, I don't push it. There are days that we pick up one flash card, some days none, and other days we may do 10-12. Math, we are also going at a very slow pace for this as well. And I'm fine with that.
The only thing I have to compare him to is what Ethan was doing while he was in Kindergarden and it is no where near what Ashton is doing, yet if I compare what Ashton is doing at his age compared to what Ethan did at that same AGE and Ashton is doing WAY more. Ethan has a early birthday which will always make him one of the older kids in class, while Ashton is at the other end of the spectrum. I definitely think older is the way to go!
So, for now, we are going to continue learning, making it fun, but start the REAL Kindergarden nitty gritty next year. I know this is early on in the school year, and I guess things could change, but I really don't see any negatives by doing it this way. Ashton's already been prepped at the beginning of the year that he was going to do 2 years of Kindergarden (which I secretly whispered was way more fun than having to go straight into 1st and all the work that comes with that grade! :) )
4 comments:
That is a great decision! It will be such a gift to him. We did the same thing with our son. He just missed the Kindergarten cut off and I "planned" on doing Kindergarten anyways. Within in four weeks I realized that he just wasn't ready for some of the things we were learning. I completely backed off and called it K4. He learned a TON and there was much less frustration for both of us. Now this year, the Kindergarten stuff is fast going.
We did the same thing with our spring birthday boys!! This yr is our K6 year,last yr was K5. They will do first grade when they are 7. It's a decision that has been encouraged by other moms who have older children and did the same thing. No regrets!
It's a great decision! I'm planning on doing the same thing with Hank - his b-day is September 6th.
I think for most boys it's better to be the oldest in the class. I'm glad I don't have to make that choice for Hunter. He'll be the oldest, too.
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