When kids go to kindergarten in Germany, they start at age three. The basic goal is to socialize the youngsters and make them aware of their surroundings, rather than filling their heads with useful, basic education. In their sixth year, the children begin first grade. This is when they begin to learn the basics. The prerequisite for children entering first grade is pretty minimal. They should be able to write their first name, follow directions, play nicely with others, recognize numbers in dot patters (think of dice), count to ten. Stuff like that. Sounds pretty reasonable, right?
So, when we started talking about going to America, we didn’t really think about what our son would need to know when he starts first grade this fall. We thought that the kindergartens were basically the same: to get the kids socialized and introduce them to some kind of educational structure. But last week, after my husband received his immigrant visa in the mail, it suddenly became priority to make sure that our kiddo has what it takes to enter first grade.
After contacting the principal of the grade school my boy may attend this fall (assuming we really do return to the good ol’ USA), I discovered that he is, in fact, about a semester behind schedule. I had been home schooling him a bit in German, up until this point, just to give him an edge when he starts German first grade. Good thing, too. But he doesn’t have the knowledge needed to advance to first grade in America. He should be reading basic words by now (about 40 of them), writing, counting beyond 110 by 2s, 5s and 10s, calculating simple math problems...
When did this start happening? I don’t remember doing all this in kindergarten. Okay, I don’t remember much about kindergarten at all. My memories of that class encompass Show and Tell day, cookies-and milk snack time, Letter-People. Oh, and I’ll never forget the time I handed in a kitty cat ditto and the teacher called me to her desk to ask why I hadn’t colored it.
“I did,” I said to her, “I colored it white. See?” I pointed to the places where my white Crayola had gone outside the lines and faded the blue outline. My teacher didn’t say anything. But before handing in the page, all the kids at my table had said that I was doing it wrong. That I had to color it a color. “White is a color,” I’d told them calmly. Little did I know...
When I returned to the table, the boy next to me leaned close to and whispered, "See? I told you." The two little girls on the other side of him nodded sagely.
What happened to those days of kindergarten, when the biggest issue was whether white was an appropriate color to color with, or who poked a hole in the inflatable Mr. D (for Doughnut)? I'm now doing hard-core home schooling in the afternoon hours when he should be watching Scooby Doo, or riding his bike in the driveway. Having to rush my child to catch up with the rest of the American kids his age is stressing him out.
And me too. And we're only in the first week.
