Wanna talk about Preschool

[luvsJack]

OP, did you actually visit the public pre-school classrooms? It sounds like you have a very strong bias based on your own school experiences and no warm fuzzies on the website. My district has an old, terrible website (which is in the process of being completely overhauled) but it excels at educating students. I would only suggest that if you want to stay in your community as your children grow, you need to be one of the forces for change. Go to the school board meetings. Join the PTA. Hold the administrators' feet to the fire. It drives me nuts when people whine about public schools and then don't do anything to help make them better.

I would agree with actually visiting the school and checking things out. Is there not some chance that the schools have improved since you attended there?

I know people that went to extremes to make sure their kids didn't attend the same high school they did only to find out that the school they were avoiding had greatly improved to the point of being a better school than the one they sent their kids to.

 

[RangerPooh]

I agree. I would at least give them the benefit of the doubt and check it out. I don't know how long ago you graduated from the local school system but schools are being held accountable these days, or at least are supposed to be. I know that everyone who grew up in my hometown jokes that the educational system wasn't the greatest, but we realize that it certainly wasn't as bad as it could have been. DH and I have lived in communities where we vowed should that our children be school age when/if we still live there, we will send them to another school district as the lcoal system is/was terrible. Yet as a teacher I have realized that even in the less than flattering school districts you can still find decent teachers who make the effort to teach to the best of their abilities regardless of where the school (district) ranks.

 

[BellePrincessBelle]

That is a very good price!! Preschool is very important these days. Believe it or not Kindergarten is very academic & not as much play as it used to be.

 

[padams]

The cost of 5 days/week, half day preschool at DSs' private school is $12,250.

 

[torinsmom]

You are not kidding about kindergarten being academic. Our K's are expected to be reading at a DRA reading level 6. This is text such as "Maggie had a bad day. She lost her favorite hat. She needs a hug"......... They are also expected to write 2-3 sentences to a topic by the end of kindergarten with 5-6 words spelled correctly and correct capitalization and punctuation. For math, they should know numbers through 100(rote counting and recognition) and have knowledge of many concepts including addition, subtraction, patterns, graphing, time, fractions, etc. It is really hard to get them where they need to be if they have not been exposed to these concepts. On the other hand, if they have been exposed to these concepts, but are unable to separate from their parents, or understand the idea of raising their hand, walking in a straight line, stopping work when asked to do so, etc, they will still have trouble acclimating to school.

 

[Lachesis00]

My son is almost 3, and I am trying to get handle on what he will/should know for kinder. Things have changed so much since my oldest.

 

[luvmy3]

I think that is very reasonable. My kids pre-school was $300 a month for the 3 half day a week program. I loved the school and it was worth every penny. They even had a private kindergarten, but it was just too expensive for us to pay for 3 kids.

 

[Disneycrazy!!]

At our elementary schools, kids are expected to at least identify and write their upper and lower case letters, count to 20, be able to write their names, capitalizing the first letter, and be able to write their addresses and phone numbers. Kids who come in without knowing the basics tend to spend 2 years in kindergarten, because by the end of the year, they need to be reading pretty well.

Exactly. In kindergarden here, they do all the things you mentioned above. My son was only 2 years old and could do those things. I felt bad for the 5 year old kids we knew, who couldn't do any of those things. They were so far behind. They are even teaching kindergarden students here how to add and subtract.

 

[torinsmom]

Exactly. In kindergarden here, they do all the things you mentioned above. My son was only 2 years old and could do those things. I felt bad for the 5 year old kids we knew, who couldn't do any of those things. They were so far behind. They are even teaching kindergarden students here how to add and subtract.

I have a few kindergartners doing multiplication. It's not required in K, but with hands on materials, its easy to explain to a child that gets addition. We also are learning place value and adding 4 digit numbers(once you know place value and can add, that is easy as well)

Kindergarten is not what it used to be. I remember playing with blocks, listening to books and taking naps. My kids do those things(except the nap), but they also do a heck of a lot of learning.

Marsha