Kindergarten Cup--- half- empty or half-full?

Is the cup half empty or half full?
What do you think?

Austin has made it to the half-way point of the school year. He just received his third six-weeks report card, and we are so proud of the progress that he has made (see video of him reading here).
Overall, I have a positive feeling about our public school experience so far and don't have any regrets about not homeschooling this year. Actually, by sending Austin to school to learn the basics, we have been freed up to focus more in depth on phonics and reading when he is at home. As a result, Austin is at the top of his grade-level in that area.


One of the bad things, however, about leaving your child's education up to the school system is that you don't always know what he is learning at school. I really don't know what unit he is on in science or math or Chinese. I don't know what kinds of skills he is learning in gym or the arts. You really have to have a bit of faith in your child's teacher, and if there is a skill that you feel is very important, you have to do some extra reinforcement at home (reading, for example).

Here's what I do know about what Austin has been learning:

• Austin knows a lot of sight words. Since week one, he has brought home a list of sight words to memorize each week, and those words have proved invaluable as he has started to read. I just counted his "word wall" flash cards, and there are 69 sight words. If you add the words that he has picked up just by reading, his sight word count is well over 100. Every day the class has a "word wall wizard" (aka a student) who helps the teacher go over the "word wall" words (aka memory words that are up on the wall). This makes learning sight words fun instead of just doing boring flash card drills.
• Austin is also learning some phonics at school, albeit slowly. They learn a catchy phonics song/chant for each of the sounds. (for example- a-a-a- Abby is sad- a-a-a says a- waaa!) Since the phonics program seems to be going very slowly, we are doing a lot of reinforcement at home through phonics readers (Bob Books for example).
• Austin is learning to read unfamiliar words by looking at the pictures. This is something that I'm struggling with lately. I want Austin to try to decode the words that he doesn't know, but he automatically starts guessing by looking at the pictures. I don't know a lot about reading methods, but this must be something that they are teaching them to do at school. We get most of our books from the public library, but sometimes Austin will bring a book home from school to read. I have been surprised at these books because the content will be along these lines- "I see a grocery store.... I see a post office.... I see a library... etc." A brand new reader is not expected to be able to read any of those words except maybe "I see," so in order to read the book, he has to look at the illustrations to guess what the rest of the sentence might be. I'm sure there is some kind of theory behind this style of reading (confidence building, maybe?) , but I prefer to give Austin books with words he can sound out, and if a word is too advanced or irregular, I usually just tell it to him. See the Learning to Read tab of my blog for some of my favorite early readers.
• Austin's drawing and fine motor skills have greatly improved this year. Before he started kindergarten, he didn't do much more than scribble, and he definitely didn't have any interest in coloring. Now, he does a pretty good job of coloring in the lines, and he actually likes to draw. He's even become proficient in using scissors, which he uses to cut out the boy equivalent of a paper doll (rats, dogs, dinosaurs, etc).
• Austin has gotten some public speaking experience through show and tell days. (If you know our son, though, you know that Austin is already quite a talker:)
• Austin gets to play on the playground every day, which is not something that I am very good about doing on my own. He also gets gym class twice a week and art class as well.
• One thing that I'm proud of is that Austin is learning about ethnic diversity. He is around children of all ethnicities, and he has made good friends with kids of all skin colors. In fact, if I had to list the top three kids that Austin talks about from school, they would all be non-Caucasians. I think this is a very good thing for Austin, especially since most people from our church have white skin.

I'm sure I could go on and on, but I'll leave you with that for now. By the way, what do you think of my new blog header and post signature? Pretty cool, huh. Check out Blog Design by Bethany if you want one for yourself.