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The Kindergarten Blues (and Greens and Yellows and Reds ...)
I thought kindergarten would be a piece of cake. I thought my oldest Ashley would transition with no problems.
How very wrong I was. In just nine days at school, she had been on “red” three times. Not a good percentage. Green is good, yellow is okay, red a note comes home and blue you receive a phone call from the teacher.
And yes, we have had blue as well.
I do not think that the teacher is mean, and I think this system works. I just had to figure out a way to get Ashley to understand that she had to follow all the rules, all day long.
It was a hard thing for a just turned five-year-old to understand.
We talked to her about the rules. We talked about how some of the rules are silly, but sometimes what is silly to us, is not silly to the teacher or to her classmates. We told her it was OK to think the rules are silly, but to still follow them. We talked about listening, and how we all need to listen better. And now we are all practicing that more at home. She gets no warnings anymore when she doe not listen at home, it is straight to her room with no exceptions.
I have no doubt she will still have some problems “being good” in school over the course of the year, but I hope we can at least stay off of blue. And red. And possibly yellow.
Amy appears every Wednesday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Amy at her blog A Family Story.
Amy Williamson
Amy is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Wednesday.
She lives in Holly Springs with her two daughters, a four-year old aspiring High School Musical character and a two-year old who believes every day should start at 5 a.m. Amy and her husband met while attending Virginia Tech and relocated here two years ago from Virginia to escape the traffic and intermittent snow. Amy works in finance and her husband is a real estate agent. Amy enjoys playing bassoon for the Holly Springs Community Band and can often be found in her garage practicing and scaring off the neighborhood cats.
Comments
I know I am in the minority, but I think it sad that five year olds can't learn in an environment that is appropriate to five year olds. A child centered earlychildhood environment very rarely results in calls home about "inappropriate behavior".
It's been a long time since my teenagers went to kindergarten. So I'm really curious, and naive about this color scheme for following rules. What sort of things get red ratings, and what sort of things would necessitate a blue? Does one get a green for being a dullard and sitting quietly like a robot and only doing what one is asked to do? Is the kindergarten rewarding the proper behaviors like socialness, enthusiasm, creativity? Like I said, I'm totally ignorant of current kindergartens. I think I may tend to agree with "gold" above.