http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14638573/site/newsweek/

Newsweek researched schools and found that “Instead of story time, finger painting, tracing letters and snack, first graders are spending hours doing math work sheets and sounding out words in reading groups”. 

I’ve only taught kindergarten for three years, but from conversations I’ve had with the other K teachers, the curriculum has greatly changed during the last 10 years.  5 year olds used to come to school and spend a great part of their day in play.  It was thought that children of this age needed to socialize, have storytime, and engage in fun, unstructured activities such as fingerpainting, playing in the housekeeping center, building towers in the block center, etc.  This is definitely not the case today.  We do some of these things, but it is only the 4th week of school and already we are writing the letters E, F, D, and B and the numbers 0-5.  The students are matching uppercase and lowercase letters, identifying colors, making A/B patterns, sorting objects, etc.  My little ones can even tell you what sound sh, th, er, and au make.  Most of these kids will leave kindergarten reading on a first grade level, at least.

Is this too rigorous?  I don’t really think so……….my students are happy and my parents tell me that their children can’t wait to get to school each day.  The students think school is lots of fun; everything we do in kindergarten is hands-on.  The kids always have manipulatives in their hands and all of the activities seem like a game; most of the time the kids don’t even realize they are learning. For example, one of my students commented this morning:  “Mrs. Miller, it’s already lunch time?  I used to get hungry in the mornings and start thinking about lunch, but these games are so much fun, that I forgot all about lunch!”

………By the way, when I say kindergarten is not too rigourous, I am taking into account, that modifications have been made for students that need them.  I believe that all students, whether they have IEPs or not, should work on the skill level that is appropriate for them, otherwise the activity is meaningless.  There is no one size fits all for the classroom.