Forgot to say… when I was writing about kindergarten and the core curriculum… that much, much more happens in kindergarten than focus on numbers and shapes.  My friend Bobbi from Florida reminds me that kindergarten should be a rich, full experience for a child.  It’s in kindergarten that a child really begins to understand herself/himself as distinct from “the other,” and the experience of kindergarten is an introduction to a world that is different from the world of home and family.  Bobbi says it very well... and she describes the ideal kindergarten experience.  What she got in kindergarten is what should happen to all children.

Other Voices...

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from Bobbi J…

I did go to Kindergarten at age five, and I loved it.  What I remember, however, had nothing to do with "math."  I could already count when I started, and wrote numbers up to 10. After that, I am sure I never encountered numbers again until first grade.

Kindergarten conjures up memories of colors and smells and tastes and sounds - all related to the senses. We knew the melodies to ten classical pieces because we sang songs that were written for children to those melodies. We also learned French songs in French and Spanish songs in Spanish.  I am sure we did not know those languages word for word in English, but we knew what the songs were about, and probably 60% of those foreign words entered our language world   subconsciously and stayed with us. For example, I have always known the words guapo "that handsome boy" and chevalier "of the round table" even though I never met them again in a classroom until Junior High School.

I remember a playhouse at one end of the kindergarten room and a castle at the other. I remember finger paints and watercolors and screen spatters and what happened when I mixed blue and yellow.

Although I had been read to as a child, I had never heard the rich stories presented in kindergarten. Those tales turned me into an avid reader.

I learned the names of the planets and how to look at a the constellations in the night sky. Such wonder!

Because of that important year, I have been creative all my life.  I am a poet and a costume designer and an actress and a dancer, and a dynamic teacher of Shakespeare and Hawthorne and Dostoevsky and most of the classics; I do balk at Hardy (except Madding Crowd - and maybe, Jude). I have trained actors who have won Oscars and Tonys, and I have trained teachers who have been rich gifts in the lives of their students. 

So -"no" - I do not think I would put my child in a Common Core kindergarten class.  I do believe in rigorous standards for the other grades, but kindergarten should be about social encounters and exploration and joy.  I wouldn't want my kid being marked "wrong" just yet. He/she will experience" that" for the rest of his/her scholarly life.