Kindergarten Reading Quotes

So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn’t apply to you. But it does. Life is still a dead end. And we still have a hard time believing it

You will continue to read stories of crookedness and corruption - of policemen who lie and steal, doctors who reap where they do not sew, politicians on the take. Don't be misled. They are news because they are the exceptions.

Both the five-year-olds looked at me with bewilderment and a bit of fearful uncertainty. I had a sudden horrifying image of the woman I might become if I'm not careful: Crazy Aunt Liz. The divorcee in the muumuu with the dyed orange hair who doesn't eat dairy but smokes menthols, who's always just coming back from her astrology cruise or breaking up with her aroma-therapist boyfriend, who reads the Tarot cards of kindergarteners and says things like, "Bring Aunty Liz another wine cooler, baby, and I'll let you wear my mood ring...

Once when Monty was in kindergarten, I had read to him and was trying to get him to go to sleep. He said he didn't want to close his eyes because "It's dark in there.

Neurosexism promotes damaging, limiting, potentially self-fulfilling stereotypes. Three years ago, I discovered my son’s kindergarten teacher reading a book that claimed that his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language. And so I decided to write this book.

My mother taught me that reading is a kind of work, and that every paragraph merits exertion, and in this way, I learned how to absorb difficult books. Soon after I went to kindergarten, however, I learned that reading difficult books also brings trouble. I was punished for reading ahead of the class, for being unwilling to speak and act "nicely." I didn't know why I simultaneously feared and adored my female teachers, but I did know that I needed their attention

We had the schools we wanted, in a way. Parents did not tend to show up at schools demanding that their kids be assigned more challenging reading or that their kindergarteners learn math while they still loved numbers. They did show up to complain about bad grades, however. And they came in droves, with video cameras and lawn chairs and full hearts, to watch their children play sports.

The world breaks little girls. It stomps out our will, our joy, our curiosity—and replaces them with disdain, cynicism, and the need to fit into neat and tiny boxes. I learned that young, in kindergarten, when the other kids called Stella a show-off for raising her hand during class, or when the boys in first grade said I was bossy for leading a reading circle. When Stella and I would overhear the other moms at the Elite Youth Runner’s Club: The Steckler sisters are just a little much. That’s how we were described while the boys were sprinting around the playground kicking and screaming, breaking and biting. The world doesn’t celebrate girls who take up space, who demand to be heard, who are just a little much.

People can read books and watch children at the same time . . . Of course, both the reading of the books and the watching of the children will be performed in a way best described as half-assed. If you want to read your book in a non-half-assed way, you have to wait until your child is in kindergarten, or you must pay someone to watch your child while you read your book. Even then, however, you must not read the book in your home because the child will find you and jump on you and make reading impossible. You must leave your home, leave your yard, leave your street. You must drive to a cafe in town to read your book. You must run and hide from your child as if your child is serving you a subpoena. This is not insane. It does not make you bad if you do this.

She had learned to read before kindergarten, when she’d first suspected that her parents weren’t all that interested in her.

The first stage of elementary reading—reading readiness—corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences.

To figure out what students were carrying with them from kindergarten into adulthood, Chetty’s team turned to another possible explanation. In fourth and eighth grade, the students were rated by their teachers on some other qualities. Here’s a sample: Proactive: How often did they take initiative to ask questions, volunteer answers, seek information from books, and engage the teacher to learn outside class? Prosocial: How well did they get along and collaborate with peers? Disciplined: How effectively did they pay attention—and resist the impulse to disrupt the class? Determined: How consistently did they take on challenging problems, do more than the assigned work, and persist in the face of obstacles? When students were taught by more experienced kindergarten teachers, their fourth-grade teachers rated them higher on all four of these attributes. So did their eighth-grade teachers. The capacities to be proactive, prosocial, disciplined, and determined stayed with students longer—and ultimately proved more powerful—than early math and reading skills.

Miss Binney stood in front of her class and began to read aloud from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, a book that was a favorite of Ramona’s because, unlike so many books for her age, it was neither quiet and sleepy nor sweet and pretty.

Books were an antidepressant, a powerful SSRI. She'd always been one of those girls with socked feet tucked under her, her mouth slightly open in stunned, almost doped-up concentration. All written words danced in a chain for her, creating corresponding images as clear as the boy from Iran's bouncing family. She had learned to read before kindergarten, when she'd first suspected that her parents weren't all that interested in her. Then she'd kept going, plowing through children's books with their predictable anthropomorphism, heading eventually into the strange and beautiful formality of the nineteenth century, and pushing backward and forward into histories of bloody wars, into discussions of God and godlessness. What she responded to most powerfully, sometimes even physically, were novels. Once Greer read Anna Karenina for such a long, unbroken bout that her eyes grew strained and bloodshot, and she had to lie in bed with a washcloth over them as if she herself were a literary heroine from the past. Novels had accompanied her throughout her childhood, that period of protracted isolation, and they would probably do so during whatever lay ahead in adulthood. Regardless of how bad it got at Ryland, she knew that at least she would able to read there, because this was college, and reading was what you did.

Not that parents are alone in their extreme behavior. That have more than enough company among school boards and high-ranking politicians who think if you "fix the schools, they'll fix the kids." So, in Gadsden, Alabama, school officials eliminated kindergarten nap time in 2003 so the children would have more test-prep time. Two hours away in Atlanta, school officials figured that if you eliminated recess, the kids will study more. And just in case those shifty teachers try to sneak it in, Atlanta started building schools without playgrounds. "We are intent on improving academic performance," said the superintendent. "You don't do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars." Meanwhile, Georgia's governor wanted the state to give Mozart CDs to newborns because research showed Mozart improved babies' IQs (which later proved to be mythical research). Right behind him is Lincoln, Rhode Island, where they canceled the district spelling bee because only one child would win, leaving all others behind, thus violating the intent of No Child Left Behind--or, as they might say in Lincoln, no child gets ahead.

In kindergarten, he had learned how to make a bruise: you pressed it over and over with your thumb. The first time it hurt so much your eyes watered. The second time it hurt a little less. The tenth time, it was barely an ache. So he read the note again and again. It didn't stop hurting. His eyes didn't stop watering.

A study of kindergartens in Germany compared fifty play-based classes with fifty early-learning centers and found that the children who played excelled over the others in reading and mathematics and were better adjusted socially and emotionally in school. They also excelled in creativity and intelligence, oral expression, and industry.8

Terrible as this is, there’s worse news. An article in the New York Times points out a statistic that should make our nation’s leaders tremble… suspension rates, kindergarten through high school, have nearly doubled from the early 1970s through 2006. Whatever is happening with our test scores, something else, something catastrophic, is going on in our schools. As countless teachers across America can testify, disruptive kids are hijacking our classrooms.

In the United States, we spend more on public education (kindergarten through twelfth grade) than nearly any other country (more than $800 billion per year). And yet international comparisons suggest that our students are lagging behind most industrialized nations in math, science, and reading. Out of 34 comparison countries, U.S. students rank twenty-fifth in math, seventeenth in science, and fourteenth in reading. This means that as a country, we are getting a lousy return on our investment in education.

Why don’t you turn on the dawnzer?” Ramona asked, proud of her new word. Beezus looked up from her book. “What are you talking about?” she asked Ramona. “What’s a dawnzer?” Ramona was scornful. “Silly. Everybody knows what a dawnzer is.” “I don’t,” said Mr. Quimby, who had been reading the evening paper. “What is a dawnzer?” “A lamp,” said Ramona. “It gives a lee light. We sing about it every morning in kindergarten.” A puzzled silence fell over the room until Beezus suddenly shouted with laughter. “She-she means—” she gasped, “The Star-Spangled B-banner!” Her laughter dwindled to giggles. “She means the dawn’s early light.

Note that there’s no option to answer “all of the above.” Prospective workers must pick one option, without a clue as to how the program will interpret it. And some of the analysis will draw unflattering conclusions. If you go to a kindergarten class in much of the country, for example, you’ll often hear teachers emphasize to the children that they’re unique. It’s an attempt to boost their self-esteem and, of course, it’s true. Yet twelve years later, when that student chooses “unique” on a personality test while applying for a minimum-wage job, the program might read the answer as a red flag: Who wants a workforce peopled with narcissists?

The national curriculum for the Swedish preschool is twenty pages long and goes on at length about things like fostering respect for one another, human rights, and democratic values, as well as a lifelong desire to learn. The document's word choices are a pretty good clue to what Swedish society wants and expects from toddlers and preschoolers. The curriculum features the word "play" thirteen times, "language" twelve times, "nature" six times, and "math" five times. But there is not a single mention of "literacy" or "writing." Instead, two of the most frequently used words are "learning" (with forty-eight appearances) and "development" (forty-seven). The other Scandinavian countries have similar early childhood education traditions. In Finland, formal teaching of reading doesn't start until the child begins first grade, at age seven, and in the Finnish equivalent of kindergarten, which children enroll in the year they turn six, teachers will only teach reading if a child is showing an interest in it. Despite this lack of emphasis on early literacy, Finland is considered the most literate country in the world, with Norway coming in second, and Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden rounding out the top five, according to a 2016 study by Central Connecticut State University. John Miller, who conducted the study, noted that the five Nordic countries scored so well because "their monolithic culture values reading.

On Christmas Eve," Joe said, "when you were reading 'The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids' to Matty, Corrie and I were sitting on the stairs listening." Jo looked at Lilli, his face stern. "The bit I always remember best in that story is the bit when the wolf goes to the miller and tells him to throw flour over his paws to disguise them." He began to quote from the story: "'The miller thought to himself, "The wolf is going to harm someone," and refused to do as he was told. Then the wolf said, "If you do not do as I tell you, I will kill you." The miller was afraid, and did as he was told, and threw the flour over the wolf's paws until they were white. This is what mankind is like.'" He repeated the final sentence. "'This is what mankind is like.

Why does it bother me to tell people I have health problems? Doesn’t everybody at some point? I suppose that’s the crux right there. For most people, the difference is in the “some point” part. They have a problem. They go to the doctor. Doctor fixes it. Life moves on. It was a small, annoying inconvenience. For me, and likely for you since you’re reading this, your problem is not so temporary. You’ve got it for life, or until science finds a cure, which for some diseases is as likely as winning the lottery when you haven’t even bought a ticket. So we make people nervous. Nobody wants to have a condition that affects their social outings, work choices, family life, and just general day-to-day stuff. Nobody picks that for what they want to be when they grow up. “Oh teacher!” The kindergartener excitedly raises his hand. “When I grow up, I want to have a chronic illness and have people say how strong and courageous I am for enduring it even though I don’t have any choice in the matter! Woo-hoo.” Instead,

IF YOUR CHILD IS READY FOR FIRST GRADE: 1979 EDITION 1. Will your child be six years, six months or older when he begins first grade and starts receiving reading instruction? 2. Does your child have two to five permanent or second teeth? 3. Can your child tell, in such a way that his speech is understood by a school crossing guard or policeman, where he lives? 4. Can he draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored? 5. Can he stand on one foot with eyes closed for five to ten seconds? 6. Can he ride a small two-wheeled bicycle without helper wheels? 7. Can he tell left hand from right? 8. Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home? 9. Can he be away from you all day without being upset? 10. Can he repeat an eight- to ten-word sentence, if you say it once, as "The boy ran all the way home from the store"? 11. Can he count eight to ten pennies correctly? 12. Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?

Less is not known as a teacher, in the same way Melville was not known as a customs inspector. And yet both held the respective positions. Though he was once an endowed chair at Robert’s university, he has no formal training except the drunken, cigarette-filled evenings of his youth, when Robert’s friends gathered and yelled, taunted, and played games with words. As a result, Less feels uncomfortable lecturing. Instead, he re-creates those lost days with his students. Remembering those middle-aged men sitting with a bottle of whiskey, a Norton book of poetry, and scissors, he cuts up a paragraph of Lolita and has the young doctoral students reassemble the text as they desire. In these collages, Humbert Humbert becomes an addled old man rather than a diabolical one, mixing up cocktail ingredients and, instead of confronting the betrayed Charlotte Haze, going back for more ice. He gives them a page of Joyce and a bottle of Wite-Out—and Molly Bloom merely says “Yes.” A game to write a persuasive opening sentence for a book they have never read (this is difficult, as these diligent students have read everything) leads to a chilling start to Woolf’s The Waves: I was too far out in the ocean to hear the lifeguard shouting, “Shark! Shark!” Though the course features, curiously, neither vampires nor Frankenstein monsters, the students adore it. No one has given them scissors and glue sticks since they were in kindergarten. No one has ever asked them to translate a sentence from Carson McCullers (In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together) into German (In der Stadt gab es zwei Stumme, und sie waren immer zusammen) and pass it around the room, retranslating as they go, until it comes out as playground gibberish: In the bar there were two potatoes together, and they were trouble. What a relief for their hardworking lives. Do they learn anything about literature? Doubtful. But they learn to love language again, something that has faded like sex in a long marriage. Because of this, they learn to love their teacher.

The California Board of Education provides, through its virtual libraries, a book intended for kindergarten teachers to read to their students: Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity by Brook Pessin-Whedbee.19 The author begins with a familiar origin story: “Babies can’t talk, so grown-ups make a guess by looking at their bodies. This is the sex assigned to you at birth, male or female.”20 This author runs the gamut of typical kindergarten gender identity instruction. Who Are You? offers kids a smorgasbord of gender options. (“These are just a few words people use: trans, genderqueer, non-binary, gender fluid, transgender, gender neutral, agender, neutrois, bigender, third gender, two-spirit….”) The way baby boomers once learned to rattle off state capitals, elementary school kids are now taught today’s gender taxonomy often enough to have committed it to memory. And while gender ideologues insist they are merely presenting an objective ontology, it is hard to miss that they seem to hope kids will pick a fun, “gender-creative”21 option for themselves.

Because I was reading today in the science section of the paper that passionate love lasts only a year, maybe two, if you're lucky. Because I want to be extra lucky. Because the article apologized specifically to poets - sorry, you hopeless saps - as though we automatically believe in love more than anyone else (more than kindergarten teachers, long-haired carpenters) & have been pushing this Non-Truth on everyone. Because who knows what will happen, but I want to, baby, want to believe it's always possible to love bigger & madder, even after two, three, four years, four decades. I want a love as dirty as a snowball fight in the sludge, under grimy yellow lights. I want this winter inside my lungs. Inside my brain & dream. I want to eat the unplowed street & fog that's been erasing evergreens. I want to eat the fog only to discover it's some giant's lost silver blanket. I want to find the giant & return to him his treasure. I want the journey to be long. & strange, like a map drawn in snow by our shadows shivering. I want to shiver against you, into you.

A unexpected result of having written Letters to Men of Letters is the pleasure I have felt at introducing my favorite authors to those who did not know about them before. Ralph is an example. We were in the same schools since kindergarten, but had not been in touch for 55 years. We recently reconnected. Although unfamiliar with most of my authors, Ralph read my book, and then he was inspired to go to the library! I was surprised and touched that what I wrote was having an effect on my classmate. His helpful advice to me about how to approach today’s presentation was “Just think of your talk as introducing your author friends to your other friends.” A further benefit for me in writing Letters to Men of Letters is that I got to show who I was and who I am. A longtime family friend who doesn’t usually read books like mine recently said, ‘Diane—I read your book and it sounds just like you.' I had been worried about what anyone not familiar with my particular Men of Letters would make of my letters to them. And now thanks to Ralph and Anne, I am finding out. This has been an unexpected gift.

As a parent, I challenge myself to sit with my child in his feeling of distress so he knows he isn’t alone, as opposed to pulling my child out of this moment, which leaves him alone the next time he finds himself there. For example, when my child says, “Ugh, the block tower keeps falling! Help me!,” instead of saying, “Here, let me build you a sturdy base,” in order to help him out of the hard moment, I might say, “Ugh, how annoying!” Then I’ll take a few audible deep breaths and say, “Hmm . . . I wonder what we could do to make it sturdier . . . ,” and model a look of curiosity. All of this is designed to connect to my child within the distress. When my child says, “Everyone in my class lost a tooth, I’m the only one who didn’t!” I don’t say, “Sweetie, you will soon, and you’re one of the kids who can read chapter books!” in order to distract him from his disappointment. Instead, I might say, “Everyone else lost one already, huh? You wish you lost a tooth, I get that. I remember feeling something really similar in kindergarten . . .” The goal here is to help my child feel less alone in her distress. Reminding ourselves, “Connect! Connect!” encourages us to first be present in our child’s experience instead of leading our child out of his own experience.

My family and I really enjoyed this book. We loved the characters and the illustrations in the book. It gives great insight to what those first days of school can be like. It's just a very fun and entertaining book to read. I recommend this book to all families it will not disappoint.

Amount of Homework in Elementary and Secondary School Many newcomers are often surprised at how little homework students are assigned on a daily basis. This is because in BC, the teachers see more value in the quality of the work, rather than the quantity. In addition, the teachers must follow the guidelines set by the BC Ministry of Education about the amount of homework to be given to elementary and secondary students. The guidelines are as follows: Elementary School From Kindergarten to Grade 3: no homework is given From Grade 4 to Grade 7: ½ hour per night of homework is given Some examples of homework given are: Complete work given in class, read a book for a specified time, write a journal entry and work with classmates on a class project. Secondary School Grades 8 to 12: 1 to 2 hours per night, however students learning English will take longer. Some examples of homework given are: Gather information from various sources, think or reflect on a given topic and write about it, read chapters of a book or work with classmates on a group or class project. For more detailed descriptions of the homework assigned to students, please see the homework brochures on the Multilanguage parent information brochures page on the VSB website.

Dr. Meyers is in surgery at the moment.” She reached for a piece of paper and wrote the hospital phone number on it and handed it to me through the little hole. “You can call back during regular business hours and leave a message with his secretary if you’d like.” She spoke to me as if I were either a child or a crazy person. “Okay.” I took the piece of paper and walked out of the sliding glass doors, staring at the paper in my hands in disbelief. Had she called him? I wondered. Did he tell her to say that to me? There was no way, I thought. I shuffled back to Nate’s truck, still freezing. I turned it on and cranked up the heater and then I cried, that pathetic type of crying like when you pee your pants in kindergarten and you’re filled with a mixture of shame and regret for holding it so long. Then, when everyone starts laughing at your wet jeans, you get angry and want to scream Screw all of you! After the kids stop laughing, you never want to see them again because you’re the only kindergartener who ever peed her pants on the story rug while Ms. Alexander read The Giving Tree for the twelfth time. Everyone else was sitting crisscross applesauce while you were fidgeting about, trying to hold it until the end of the story when the teacher asked what the moral was so you could say, “It’s about being generous to your friends,” even though, later in life, you learn the story is really about a selfish little bastard who sucked the life out of the only thing that gave a shit about him. But you never got the chance for your shining moment because you peed on the story rug, got laughed at, then cried pathetic tears. Not that that happened to me . . .

The promoters of the standards claim they are based in research. They are not. There is no convincing research, for example, showing that certain skills or bits of knowledge (such as counting to 100 or being able to read a certain number of words) if mastered in kindergarten will lead to later success in school . . . . At best, the standards reflect guesswork, not cognitive or developmental science. end of Edward Miller and Nancy Carlsson-Paige commentary We

Common Core has basically eliminated kindergarten. Yes, you read that correctly. It has moved the start of formalized instruction from Grade 1 to kindergarten. And having done so. it has largely eliminated the all-important play and socialization factors at this level. This is not to mention the wide swath of developmentally inappropriate tasks it is requiring teachers to teach and children to learn up through Grade 6.

program and not. “It’s just like sports,” Dhuey said. “We do ability grouping early on in childhood. We have advanced reading groups and advanced math groups. So, early on, if we look at young kids, in kindergarten

I had so much—an education, a healthy sense of self, a deep arsenal of ambition—and I was wise enough to credit my mother, in particular, with instilling it in me. She’d taught me how to read before I started kindergarten, helping me sound out words as I sat curled like a kitten in her lap, studying a library copy of Dick and Jane. She’d cooked for us with care, putting broccoli and Brussels sprouts on our plates and requiring that we eat them. She’d hand sewn my prom dress, for God’s sake. The point was, she’d given diligently and she’d given everything. She’d let our family define her. I was old enough now to realize that all the hours she gave to me and Craig were hours she didn’t spend on herself.

From the first years of life, children have an ability to learn math and develop their interest in math. What they know when they enter kindergarten and first grade predicts their mathematics achievement for years to come—even throughout their school career. Moreover, what they know in math predicts their reading achievement later. Their early knowledge of literacy also predicts their later reading ability … but that’s all. Because math predicts later math and later reading, mathematics appears to be a core component of cognition (Duncan et al., 2007; Duncan & Magnuson, 2011).

study, they looked at 100 classes of 10 year-olds. Fifty of those classes had been play-based during their pre-K and kindergarten years – and 50 were involved with early academics classes during these same two years. The study concluded that, “By age ten, the children who had played excelled over the others. . . . They were more advanced in reading and mathematics and they were better adjusted socially and emotionally in school. They excelled in creativity and intelligence, oral expression, and industry.” As a result, Germany returned to play-based pre-K and kindergartens.

We do ability grouping early on in childhood. We have advanced reading groups and advanced math groups. So, early on, if we look at young kids, in kindergarten and first grade, the teachers are confusing maturity with ability. And they put the older kids in the advanced stream, where they learn better skills; and the next year, because they are in the higher groups, they do even better; and the next year, the same things happens, and they do even better again. The only country we don’t see this going on is Denmark. They have a national policy where they have no ability grouping until the age of ten.” Denmark waits to make selection decisions until maturity differences by age have evened out.

Children listened well and were quiet during the reading of the book which is a good indication that the story is written for the right age group,3 to 5 year olds. I liked the idea of questions, this showed comprehension skills, as the children did well answering the questions."-Katrina Baillie(Kindergarten Teacher,B.Ed Early Childhood.)

The illustrations in the book are beautiful. The story is a great page-turner and is very clear and easy to read. The children really enjoy answering the questions."-Kay Harling (Director Emerald Preschool & Community Kindergarten, B.Ed Early Childhood.)

In the United States and other countries, we’d put off this reckoning, convinced that our kids would always get second and third chances until well into adulthood. We had the same attitude toward teachers: Anyone and everyone could become a teacher, as long as they showed up for class, followed the rules, and had good intentions. We had the schools we wanted, in a way. Parents did not tend to show up at schools demanding that their kids be assigned more challenging reading or that their kindergarteners learn math while they still loved numbers. They did show up to complain about bad grades, however. And they came in droves, with video cameras and lawn chairs and full hearts, to watch their children play sports.

The governors of Oklahoma and South Carolina signed bills within the past week repealing the Common Core state standards, guidelines for children’s achievement in reading and math between kindergarten and high school graduation.

School vision statements often read something like, “We believe all kids can learn” or “life-long learners” or something silly like that. What an absurd thing to put in writing! “We, at Grassy Hill Elementary, believe all Kindergarteners can get taller” or “We, the Prospect Junior High cafeteria staff, believe that all kids can and will eat food.

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Joy to the world, the teacher’s dead We barbecued the head What happened to the body? We flushed it down the potty And round and round it goes Until it overflows And round and round and round it goes

What to Do Tonight Teach your kids that they are responsible for their own education. Kids should feel in charge, not that school is being done “to them.” Note this is very different from blaming kids who are struggling. If your child is not learning from his teacher, acknowledge this without blaming the teacher. “Mr. Cooper is doing the best he can. He just doesn’t know how to teach you the way you learn.” Encourage your child to think of what will motivate him to master the material being taught in the class anyway. Remind your child of the big picture, that grades matter less than the ways he or she develops as a student and person. Resist the pressure to push your child if he’s not ready, be it reading in kindergarten, algebra in eighth grade, or AP classes in high school. Create an advocacy group made of up teachers, parents, and kids to talk about what you can all do to make school a less stressful experience. Consider advocating for brain-friendly experiences in school such as exercise, the arts, and meditation.

To counter the effects of too-early learning, here are some things you can do: Where possible, choose schools that are developmentally sensitive in their curriculum and appropriate for your child. Some kids will do really well as big fish in small ponds. It gives them the confidence to tackle the currents without being afraid of being swept away. They get to grow strong and feel strong. So what if there are bigger fish in bigger ponds? Help your children find the right curricular environments for them. Relax and take a long view, even if no one else around you is. Most kids who learn to read at five aren’t better readers at nine than those who learn to read at six or seven. Bill remembers vividly the mild panicky feeling he and Starr had when their daughter was five years old and some of her friends were starting to read. Even though they knew that kids learn to read much easier at age seven than at age five, and that pushing academics too early was harmful and produced no lasting benefit, Bill and Starr wondered if they were jeopardizing their child’s future by letting her fall behind her peers. They briefly considered pulling her out of her nonacademic kindergarten. But they stuck to their guns and left her in a school that did not push and did not give her any homework until the fourth grade. Despite an unrushed start, she received her PhD in economics from the University of Chicago at the age of twenty-six and is a successful economist. Bill loves telling that story, not to brag (okay, just a little), but to emphasize that it is difficult to buck the tide even when you know the current is carrying you the wrong way. Remember that any gains from rushing development will wash out. Parents often tell Bill that their third grader is doing fourth- or fifth-grade math—but he never hears twenty-six-year-olds brag that they’re more successful than most twenty-eight-year-olds. Don’t go overboard on AP classes. You are doing your child no favors if you let her take more APs at the cost of her mental health and sleep. There’s a reason why kids get more out of Moby-Dick in college than in high school. When we consider the enormous differences in the maturation of their prefrontal cortex—and the associated development in their capacity for abstraction and emotional maturity—it should come as no surprise that the majority of students will understand and appreciate novels written for adults better when they’re older. The same is true for complex scientific theories and data, quantitative concepts, and historical themes, which are easier for most kids to grasp when they are college aged. This isn’t to say that some students aren’t ready for college-level courses when they’re fifteen. The problem is that when this becomes the default for most students (I’ll never get into college if I don’t have five AP classes) it’s destructive.

Unbeknownst to them or their families, children who grow up in environments with few or no literacy experiences are already playing catch-up when they enter kindergarten and the primary grades. It is not simply a matter of the number of words unheard and unlearned. When words are not heard, concepts are not learned. When syntactic forms are never encountered, there is less knowledge about the relationship of events in a story. When story forms are never known, there is less ability to infer and to predict. When cultural traditions and the feelings of others are never experienced, there is less understanding of what other people feel.

A child in kindergarten learns a lot: he learns to draw, to color, to make friends. He also learns more because he has fun; then, school comes and… it’s over!

Ava was obviously observant, an enthusiast of spring: she’d seen the white frog and the two baby flies killed by the bus driver. And she was a better reader and speller than the others. I told her she could get a book to read, but she didn’t want to do that, either. Instead, she got out her poetry notebook. Poor thing: she was already fed up with being asked to do inane worksheets and she was only in kindergarten. Twelve more years to go.

As the children grew, Goldilocks took great joy in introducing them to the stories she had loved as a child. When her son went off to kindergarten, Goldilocks thought about looking for a job. But her resume now had a seven-year hole in it, and her practical skills were long out of date. The only jobs Goldilocks could qualify for were minimum wage. She suddenly realized that being practical had made her horribly unhappy. On a whim, Goldilocks decided to do the one thing she had always wanted more than anything else—she was finally going to write a novel. She didn’t care if it was impractical. She didn’t care if nobody would ever read her novel. She was going to do it just because she wanted to.

Betty the butterfly has no friends.

How the hell can a woman who looks so much like a kindergarten teacher kick so much ass?" I shrug. "Don't judge a book by its cover. I assure you I'm the last woman in the world who's going to read you Goodnight Moon.

This is an encouraging finding on two fronts. It means that young black children have continued to make gains relative to their white counterparts. It also means that whatever gap remains can be linked to a handful of readily identifiable factors. The data reveal that black children who perform poorly in school do so not because they are black but because a black child is more likely to come from a low-income, low-education household. A typical black child and white child from the same socioeconomic background, however, have the same abilities in math and reading upon entering kindergarten.

I love this book. It is a great book for any age to read. It brings back memories of my first day of kindergarten. Also it's a good book to help your child overcome fear of the first day. -Adrienne Swain

Awesome read full of nostalgia for me. -kidsbookzone

I love this book. It is a great book for any age to read. It brings back memories of my first day of kindergarten. Also it's a good book to help your child overcome fear of the first day. -Adrienne Swain

You know it’s a great read when you can relate to the characters in the book. My kids are all grown up now. However, I am always looking for good reads to give as gifts to my family, friends, and their little ones. This book brought back memories for me. I remember the first day of school when I dropped my kids off. I think I had more anxiety than they did. Thank goodness there was a teacher much like Mr. Shipman that helped me cope. This is a great read for new parents, teachers, students , and more. I hope you enjoy “The First Day Of School as much as I did and more. Sondra Stinson-Robinson

A must read! A great book for me and my little ones, very helpful in preparing our minds on what to expect on the first day of kindergarten. Thank you for this interesting and very informative read. -Chi girl

I won a Kindle copy of this book on Goodreads Giveaways. Sweet book about what to expect the first day of Kindergarten. Helps take the scariness out of the unknown. Very well done. -Cheryl

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Educational reform over the last century - including, throughout Western democracies, standardised testing, moves to national curriculums, and competitive tertiary entry scores, sems to work on behalf of employers and parent-investors first, allowing them to efficiently read a young person's future without having to go to the trouble of listening to her. Education, from kindergarten coaching to big-ticket degrees, increasingly relies on the professionalisation of childhood and youth.

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The national curriculum for the Swedish preschool is twenty pages long and goes on at length about things like fostering respect for one another, human rights, and democratic values, as well as a lifelong desire to learn. The document’s word choices are a pretty good clue to what Swedish society wants and expects from toddlers and preschoolers. The curriculum features the word play thirteen times, language twelve times, nature six times, and math five times. But there is not a single mention of literacy or writing. Instead, two of the most frequently used words are learning (with forty-eight appearances) and development (forty-seven). The other Scandinavian countries have similar early childhood education traditions. In Finland, formal teaching of reading doesn’t start until the child begins first grade, at age seven, and in the Finnish equivalent of kindergarten, which children enroll in the year they turn six, teachers will only teach reading if a child is showing an interest in it. Despite this lack of emphasis on early literacy, Finland is considered the most literate country in the world, with Norway coming in second, and Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden rounding out the top five, according to a 2016 study by Central Connecticut State University. John Miller, who conducted the study, noted that the five Nordic countries scored so well because “their monolithic culture values reading.” They have something else in common: their commitment to play in the early years.

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