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Kids starting school at four or even younger sounds super weird to me. Here in Austria kids start school the september after they turn six.  And even then school hours in primary school  are something like 8-11:30, so still lots of time for playing and well - being a little kid. Even my 10 year old gets out by 1p.m. (there is after school care for children whose parents work, but it is not compulsory and there are no lessons, just one hour to do their homework, lunch and playtime). And children here seem to learn to read just fine. I don't see a point in starting to teach them so early.  My daughter was an early reader without being taught, so I guess she would have been fine, but for most children it sounds pretty stressful.

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20 hours ago, Ali said:

. They expect them to be reading and writing paragraphs in kindergarten.

I would love a reference for this because I have never heard of of this in any jurisdiction and Google is not confirming that it's a thing. I personally learned to read in Grade 1 (age 6).

https://www.k12reader.com/teaching-reading-comprehension-in-kindergarten/

https://www.ontario.ca/document/kindergarten-program-2016/thinking-about-demonstrating-literacy-and-mathematics-behaviours#section-2

I see some simple paragraphs to read on some worksheets listed Kindergarten/Grade 1 on Teachers Pay Teachers but the Ontario curriculum above is much more about letters and sounds. It's all very interesting!

 

 

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So our cut off here is December 1st but there is a lot of debate about children with "summer birthdays" and if they should be held back. My son turned 5 June 21st, he started Kindergarten September 6th. He will turn 6 the last day of Kindergarten this year and will be 6 his entire 1st grade year. Starting him was the right option because he has excelled, he's grown in maturity and we were able to finally get his SPD diagnosed. My sister really struggled regarding starting my nephew who was born July 9th and finally decided to start him when we decided to start my son (same age, same school, went to the same preschool program, basically together since birth). My nephew excelled this year and my sister was so happy she started him. It's so hard because each child is different. The teachers I've spoken to also say it's a bigger concern for boys. My daughter will be 5 July 21 and I have no second thought starting her. 

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1 hour ago, PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea said:

I would love a reference for this because I have never heard of of this in any jurisdiction and Google is not confirming that it's a thing. I personally learned to read in Grade 1 (age 6).

https://www.k12reader.com/teaching-reading-comprehension-in-kindergarten/

https://www.ontario.ca/document/kindergarten-program-2016/thinking-about-demonstrating-literacy-and-mathematics-behaviours#section-2

I see some simple paragraphs to read on some worksheets listed Kindergarten/Grade 1 on Teachers Pay Teachers but the Ontario curriculum above is much more about letters and sounds. It's all very interesting!

 

 

I believe @Ali was talking about American school systems, though I’m not positive. I can’t remember if she’s in the states or not. Educational standards differ between countries though, so it’s possible the information you linked to wouldn’t apply to where she is. 

I don’t know specifics myself as my daughter is too young for Kindergarten right now. I have heard pretty much every parent I know with older kids mention how much more intense Kindergarten and First Grade are now then it was when we were kids though. I don’t think they’d be saying that without reason. 

ETA: I looked up information for our current school district (Connecticut - which is in the Northeastern US) out of curiosity. There’s a parent questionnaire they have you fill out as part of kindergarten registration. I think it’s so they can get a sense of where your child is developmentally so they can address any issues that might pop up. Anyway, here’s what it looks like:

5A224705-1BB3-4A24-9845-69194ED002EF.thumb.png.fe17e7a8e94c0d73b2ede89e76a79b44.png

Thats for kids starting Kindergarten though, not a list of what they’ll be learning in Kindergarten. I don’t know how common those standards are across the board, just that this is what our town looks for in kindergarten readiness.

Edited by VelociRapture
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Here School year starts the middle of August and the cut of date is usually the end of February for children starting. 

I remember when I was in Primary 1 the youngest boy in my class cried every morning going into school up until Christmas, academically he was ready to start at 4, he was in the top group for everything all through school but it took a long time for him to adjust to being at school 6 hours a day, this was the early 90s before universal free nursery places were available for all over 3s and most children went to playgroup's that only ran for a couple of hours for one or two days a week, so a lot of children were not used to the structure of school. They did used to have primary 1 children only do a half day until the October half term holiday to help them adjust. 

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2 hours ago, PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea said:

I would love a reference for this because I have never heard of of this in any jurisdiction and Google is not confirming that it's a thing. I personally learned to read in Grade 1 (age 6).

https://www.k12reader.com/teaching-reading-comprehension-in-kindergarten/

https://www.ontario.ca/document/kindergarten-program-2016/thinking-about-demonstrating-literacy-and-mathematics-behaviours#section-2

I see some simple paragraphs to read on some worksheets listed Kindergarten/Grade 1 on Teachers Pay Teachers but the Ontario curriculum above is much more about letters and sounds. It's all very interesting!

 

 

I live in state of Michigan and I linked the common core standards below for the entire United States and the state of Michigan.

http://www.corestandards.org/standards-in-your-state/

https://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-28753_64839_65510---,00.html

We live in a really good school district, so it might be more intense than other districts. My daughter was expected to know high frequently word by sight and read emergent books. She had weekly homework assignments at the end of the year that required her to write three to four sentence paragraphs. We helped her, but she was not ready for it and it was frustrating for all of us.

There are high expectations for math too. My daughter said her third grade teacher has been getting emails from parents about the difficulty level. 

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My daughter is a HS principal at a US school in So America. This International school has students from 2 years of age through HS on a very nice, large campus. Thank you US tax payers. It’s a pricey school for locals and free for US families stationed at the consulate. Teachers and other staff can enroll their children also ( some kids get free tuition as part of their parent’s compensation packet). 

When my GD started at this school at age 2, nearly 3 years ago, the pre-school program was intense. In the first year, by age 3, the local children were expectEd to be fully bilingual, toilet trained, and independent in that function, and they had weekly homework packets. It was very intense, and  they drummed kids out at a very good clip. Classes are full day, 5 days a week and the kids are expected to be there. In the last year it has really mellowed with the addition of a Montessori influence. Now there is no homework for anyone in pre or elementary school and the littler kids are learning through play and tactile methods. For example, in Pre-K, letter formation is taught via play dough. My GD is fully bilingual ( lives in bilingual home), knows her letters, numbers, can read some early readers, but still has a hard with writing. She makes some of her letters backwards. She does struggle with the long day and can be a bear without that nap. We push little ones so hard these days.

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12 hours ago, VelociRapture said:

I wish we could have planned when to have our kids. We tried and it didn’t work out. First time I would have been due around Halloween, but we miscarried. Second time I was due mid-January, but she was six weeks premature, meaning she could technically start Kindergarten in two separate years. This time it took us five months to conceive and  I’m due in late November, but history has taught me to be prepared for the birth by early October just in case. So apparently the best we could do was avoid due dates during Tax Season, when my husband is busiest. Our babies just really want to be born at the end of the year apparently. ?

 

Yes, I know I was extremely lucky to get a say in the timing at all - my daughter did end up being born a month early, but that put her in September rather than October, and where I live you only have a choice for Jan-July birthdays (& it’s very rare these days for June & July birthdays to start at 4.5 rather than 5.5). It didn’t make a difference to the timing of our first two, but by number 3 I’d worked out that my body apparently would like to be fundie (lucky my brain would not) and took advantage of being able to plan.

 

I am seeing a lot more push back lately from parents about how much is expected of little ones - many parents looking for schools with a play-based curriculum in the early years and that sort of thing. Recently on my (Australian) parenting forum Facebook group someone asked about homework in the primary (K-6) years, and I know it’s a pretty small sample but it’s interesting to see how much support for no-homework has grown.

 

A2C70440-8222-4DFD-B41A-46F39AA3C855.jpeg

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2 hours ago, Ali said:

I live in state of Michigan and I linked the common core standards below for the entire United States and the state of Michigan.

http://www.corestandards.org/standards-in-your-state/

https://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-28753_64839_65510---,00.html

We live in a really good school district, so it might be more intense than other districts. My daughter was expected to know high frequently word by sight and read emergent books. She had weekly homework assignments at the end of the year that required her to write three to four sentence paragraphs. We helped her, but she was not ready for it and it was frustrating for all of us.

There are high expectations for math too. My daughter said her third grade teacher has been getting emails from parents about the difficulty level. 

Interesting, thanks! Looks like Michigan says "Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does)" - nothing about paragraphs so I guess your school is super-keen.

It's a bit crazy how different things are just a few hours' drive apart, from Ontario to Michigan. (And within one state!) I can't imagine putting all this pressure on 4 and 5 year olds really improves their reading, long term, but hey, some curriculum developers thought so, I guess. (I teach uni students so not at all well versed in early childhood education.)

I sort of vaguely remember that we were supposed to be able to print and recognize our written name before entering kindergarten (at the time, age 5) but I'd always learned the short form of my name and didn't recognize the full version. Whoops! I also remember memorizing the poems we were learning to read in Grade 1 until I finally got it.

ETA: Forgot to mention Ontario has the play-based model and junior kindergarten starts at age 4 (or 3 if your birthday is September - December).

Edited by PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea
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My kids' school is now no-homework through 2nd grade.  The exceptions are worksheets that were supposed to get done in class but didn't, studying for tests and quizzes, and studying sight words.  But parents have flexibility on when they can do those activities as they aren't 'due' a certain day.  The teachers do provide homework for families that request it.  I didn't mind when the teachers did issue homework, because it wasn't every day and was a reasonable amount for their age.  But I have no issue with the no-homework policy.  

I found out that nearly half of the families in Baby's class were requesting homework (!).  I thought maybe I was a crappy parent for not doing so, but she has excellent grades so I didn't see the point.  She understands the material well without it, so...

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6 hours ago, Snarkasarus Rex said:

I found out that nearly half of the families in Baby's class were requesting homework (!).  I thought maybe I was a crappy parent for not doing so, but she has excellent grades so I didn't see the point.  She understands the material well without it, so... 

Nope, she's better off without the homework.  She'll learn more by playing with her toys rather than doing homework.  The sort of homework (if any) that should be set in the early years is more activity based e.g. read to child, or child read to you, make something, etc, etc worksheets are not the way to go.

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In Spain school starts at 3 years old (but some.of them are still 2 because their birthday is after september). So kids born the same year, all go to the same class.

Theoretically kids know how to fully write and read at six. Some schools start letters and numbers at 3, others at 4, and trendy schools try to emulate Nordic ones and start teaching letters later because they focus more on playing.

But ALL schools (public, private, trendy or traditional) expect kids to stay full time. In Catalonia, full time is 9:00AM to 4:30 or 5:00PM. In other places in Spain there's no afternoon school. 

Most kids here go to daycare as babies or toddlers. Many of them full time. It's very difficult to avoid it, because parent's work schedule.

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The no homework thing is interesting. I have not thought so much about it, but Little Outta 1 did have much less homework than I remember getting (I went to school in the US in the 90's). What got me though was the "no grades" policy. Everything was actually being graded and how well he preformed did actually matter for his recommendation after the 4th grade, but we had no idea (and their end of the year letters were not super helpful) if he was doing well or not. He did not get real grade until 7th grade (IIRC) and I found that frustrating in the later years because he would do his homework, turn it in, that was it. Never hear about it again, no feedback at all. Same with tests and quizzes. He didn't have a connection at all. He was shocked when they got grades for the first time and he was not doing as well as he though he was in some thing (he was still fine, but more toward average in subjects that he thought he was doing great in). I don't know how much of this was his specific school (and the craptastic job they were doing) and how much was actually the policy in our state. Most of the parents with kids in his class were annoyed with how that experiment was going (it was a very new policy at the time in our schools, that I do remember being told).

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^I started university at 17 and turned 18 in July of that year. It was fine. Why would she not be able to start until she’s 18?


Some halls of residence won’t accept under 18 year olds, lots of courses aren’t available, getting student loans and funding isn’t guaranteed when your 17 either. She wants to be a veterinarian, she may have to do a year of health sciences or something distance learning first. We are a 2-4hr drive from a main university city (depending on what city she chooses).
Yes, I know I was extremely lucky to get a say in the timing at all - my daughter did end up being born a month early, but that put her in September rather than October, and where I live you only have a choice for Jan-July birthdays (& it’s very rare these days for June & July birthdays to start at 4.5 rather than 5.5). It didn’t make a difference to the timing of our first two, but by number 3 I’d worked out that my body apparently would like to be fundie (lucky my brain would not) and took advantage of being able to plan.
 
I am seeing a lot more push back lately from parents about how much is expected of little ones - many parents looking for schools with a play-based curriculum in the early years and that sort of thing. Recently on my (Australian) parenting forum Facebook group someone asked about homework in the primary (K-6) years, and I know it’s a pretty small sample but it’s interesting to see how much support for no-homework has grown.
 
A2C70440-8222-4DFD-B41A-46F39AA3C855.thumb.jpeg.e587912f3eb2c337fa73689a31a85df7.jpeg


We love homework! Sheets given out on Monday, due in Friday. And we are busy busy people - Monday-Saturday we have extra curriculars most days multiple places to be, with three very sporty children we are torn in every direction between 3-7pm.

20-30 minutes of reading (book of your own choice)
Spelling (5-10 words depending on age)
Some kind of math fact sheet (times tables, fractions, etc).

Even if my kids didn’t have official homework we still do reading, often board/card games (for maths, reading, etc).

Learning should never begin and end at school, learning at home is just as important (if not more so than school).


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In the Netherlands it is very uncommon to get homework before highschool (11 years old). Maybe once or twice a month kids would have to work on a project or a test at home but it is not part of the daily or even weekly work.

I like it, kids need to enjoy their free time.

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41 minutes ago, Melissa1977 said:

In Spain school starts at 3 years old (but some.of them are still 2 because their birthday is after september). So kids born the same year, all go to the same class.

Theoretically kids know how to fully write and read at six. Some schools start letters and numbers at 3, others at 4, and trendy schools try to emulate Nordic ones and start teaching letters later because they focus more on playing.

But ALL schools (public, private, trendy or traditional) expect kids to stay full time. In Catalonia, full time is 9:00AM to 4:30 or 5:00PM. In other places in Spain there's no afternoon school. 

Most kids here go to daycare as babies or toddlers. Many of them full time. It's very difficult to avoid it, because parent's work schedule.

In Italy it's very similar. We start the Infancy School at around 3, all the kids that turn 3 before December 31th have the right to attend, it's not mandatory though, it typically lasts from 8am to 4pm, some schools offer til 6pm. It's play based, but during the last year the kids start to do pre-writing and pre-reading work, it too tends to be play based and very respectful of a kid preferences, it's mostly a way to spot learning difficulties before they become a problem and getting early intervention.

Mandatory Primary School starts at 6yo, all kids that turn 6 that year have to attend, including mine that turned 6 at the very end of last year, so she actually started at 5,5 yo. She learned to read last summer before the school year start as a spontaneous consequence of what she had learned playing at the Infancy School. At Primary School she learned to write and basic grammar rules for writing and composing a sentence. She already had basic math knowledges because the Infancy School was Montessori based and they played a lot with mathematical materials. So this year she did nothing new re math, she just learned to focus on it in different ways, without playing with objects but writing numbers on paper. They have homeworks only on weekends because on weekdays they are at school from 8am to 4pm, add a sport or two and there's no time left. Homeworks are light work and pretty useful because they are meant to be done with parental support so it counts as one-on-one learning time. The annoying part about homeworks is colouring, I think it's an Italian form of torture, a stupid and meaningless chore that pretty much everybody detest but that's deemed "necessary".

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15 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

The annoying part about homeworks is colouring, I think it's an Italian form of torture, a stupid and meaningless chore that pretty much everybody detest but that's deemed "necessary".

Ooh coloring ahahaha yeah i guess that is because we still like to think about ourself as the land of painter you known...plus the kids usually love it because they can made a mess and still be declared good. Parents usually hate it because of the mess and the focus need. 

I remember when I was a little bit older than your kid to be frustrated by colouring because I cannot found the  color I want to represent something and my need to do it in a realty (?) way. It irks me see the other kids use I don't know blue for hair and do it in a messy way...

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So can I ask you all to take a look at what this choosing to keep your child out of school for another year can actually do and probably has done to the US school system.

1. How do you know, as a parent who has not seen how the class your child should be going into, that your child is or is not mature/ready/fill in the blank to be in kindergarten. 

2. I have heard it doesn't hurt to hold them out. Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but it does directly impact the other students in the class. Especially when children are held out because they will be a little bigger, better at sports, emotionally more mature and so on.

3. There are many children, although fewer and fewer, who go to school based on the cut off because it is the cut off for a reason. The reason is that, after study and research, the school system has determined that the vast majority of children are ready for kindergarten if they are 5 by that date.

Our cut off date was September 30th when my kids were in school.  Now it is September 1st. When you decide your child should wait a year and their birthday is in May or June your child is well over a year older than the youngest children. Grade school is when lots of growing happens and size differences are already significant. You hold your kid out of course they will excell at sports. Your child could be a foot taller than another child and weigh 15 or 20 pounds more than the younger child. Your choosing to keep your child out puts the younger, yet properly aged child at a huge disadvantage. You have changed the "bottom of the pile". (Generic yous all around) A child who could have been seen as an outstanding athlete lost his/her spot because here school sports are played by grade. Your child eclipses another child acedemically, not because they are more intelligent, but because they are more than a year older .  Educationally you have  put a child who will probably be more advanced learningwise than the child with a later birthday who goes to school when the schools says he/she should. 

We used to learn letters and match items, and otherwise be more Montessori like in kindergarten.  Or more kindergarten like in kindergarten.   Now, with the kids in kindergarten getting older and older it has turned into what 1st grade used to be.

Keeping kids out without a professional reason certainly helps your child perhaps, but over time it is pushing our younger grades to be more and more academic in nature. It is putting the kids who start on time at a disadvantage, and it will keep spiraling.  If all children who didn't have a diagnosed reason to wait a year went to school when they should they would actually have a longer time to be kids and the academics could phase in at a more gradual pace.

Just my 5000 cents worth. Sorry for the book. Hope it makes a little sense.  Yes I do have experience. Yes I have my masters in early and primary education. No I am not telling anyone what to do.  Homework is evil.

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18 minutes ago, dpndetfarm said:

So can I ask you all to take a look at what this choosing to keep your child out of school for another year can actually do and probably has done to the US school system.

1. How do you know, as a parent who has not seen how the class your child should be going into, that your child is or is not mature/ready/fill in the blank to be in kindergarten. 

2. I have heard it doesn't hurt to hold them out. Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but it does directly impact the other students in the class. Especially when children are held out because they will be a little bigger, better at sports, emotionally more mature and so on.

3. There are many children, although fewer and fewer, who go to school based on the cut off because it is the cut off for a reason. The reason is that, after study and research, the school system has determined that the vast majority of children are ready for kindergarten if they are 5 by that date.

Our cut off date was September 30th when my kids were in school.  Now it is September 1st. When you decide your child should wait a year and their birthday is in May or June your child is well over a year older than the youngest children. Grade school is when lots of growing happens and size differences are already significant. You hold your kid out of course they will excell at sports. Your child could be a foot taller than another child and weigh 15 or 20 pounds more than the younger child. Your choosing to keep your child out puts the younger, yet properly aged child at a huge disadvantage. You have changed the "bottom of the pile". (Generic yous all around) A child who could have been seen as an outstanding athlete lost his/her spot because here school sports are played by grade. Your child eclipses another child acedemically, not because they are more intelligent, but because they are more than a year older .  Educationally you have  put a child who will probably be more advanced learningwise than the child with a later birthday who goes to school when the schools says he/she should. 

We used to learn letters and match items, and otherwise be more Montessori like in kindergarten.  Or more kindergarten like in kindergarten.   Now, with the kids in kindergarten getting older and older it has turned into what 1st grade used to be.

Keeping kids out without a professional reason certainly helps your child perhaps, but over time it is pushing our younger grades to be more and more academic in nature. It is putting the kids who start on time at a disadvantage, and it will keep spiraling.  If all children who didn't have a diagnosed reason to wait a year went to school when they should they would actually have a longer time to be kids and the academics could phase in at a more gradual pace.

Just my 5000 cents worth. Sorry for the book. Hope it makes a little sense.  Yes I do have experience. Yes I have my masters in early and primary education. No I am not telling anyone what to do.  Homework is evil.

I can only speak for myself and my family. As I’ve explained, our state has a January 1st start date for school. Our daughter was due January 14th, but was born six weeks prematurely on December 5th. So, technically, she could start Kindergarten in 2021. We have not spoken to her Pediatrician at this point because she’s only 2.5. However, the fact that she is a preemie born so close to the cutoff date has made us decide that we’ll likely hold off until 2022. Had she been born full-term she wouldn’t have even been eligible to start in 2021 at all and many preemie parents end up deciding when to start school based off the child’s gestational age rather than birth age.

All that said, our daughter is big for her age - people accidentally think she’s 3 and have for a few months now due only to her size. She’s doing fairly well all things considered, but developmentally she’s still just a little kid who bounces between her gestational age and birth age when it comes to milestones and development. There is a world of difference between her and our nephew, who is 9.5 months older than her. Seeing them together really drives home the fact that she’d be in a classroom with kids his age or a bit older and we just don’t think that’s something she’d be ready for. We can always change our minds as she gets older, but that’s where we are right now. 

That’s obviously a different situation than the one you specifically mentioned (about kids born months prior to the cutoff starting late), but I just wanted to offer a different view. 

ETA: And to add, some kids starting late with births months ahead of the cutoff could be preemies as well. Viability is now at 23 weeks and that means there are likely kids out there being held back for months because they were micro-preemies. You can’t always tell which kids were born full term or not based only off how big or small they are.

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We thought about holding back our son who is born end of year as well but ultimately decided against it. Most of the advice we received is that except in very few cases where there are medical or psychological reasons for hold back, most end-of-year kids could probably use another 5-6 months of daycare/preschool/being at home but not a full year and that they will just stop progressing to a certain extent without that stimulation. I also personally found that whenever our son was promoted within his daycare to the next age group room where he was the youngest, he really blossomed and picked up so much more in terms of language, fine motor skills, social interaction, etc from the older kids. The other thing is that he's always been a 99th percentile kid so he's really big and therefore I didn't have worries about size. He was very advanced in terms of intelligence but you could absolutely see that he was younger when it came to fine motor skills like getting dressed, unscrewing the cap on a water bottle, etc.

My husband was also born Dec 25 and he says he thinks it builds character, lol. Interestingly there are some studies that have shown the opposite of Malcolm Gladwell's effect (where most successful professional athletes in certain sports were born Jan-March) when it comes to success in business/high-earning types. They are, in the American context, often clustered at the end of the year and one thesis is that they had to push themselves more during the crucial early education years in order to keep up with peers who were almost a year older in some instances.

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I am at University studying Social Sciences with the hope of teaching History at High school and I don't plan on forcing any pupil's to do homework. My English college lecturer always said that he hated compulsory homework because some students no matter how much teacher's or parent's tried to force them to do their homework they still either didn't do it or made minimum effort and all it did was waste his time giving the child into trouble and sending letters home to parents. He always did give us options to finish questions or do essays but it was not compulsory, most of the class did do them. 

Homework has it's benefits but too much homework every night after 6 or 7 hours of school is damaging. Some teachers at my school would sometimes ask us to watch documentary's on TV if it happened to be related to what we were doing, I think it's better to learn using a combination of written homework, reading, online learning and watching documentaries and sometimes teachers don't do this.

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20 hours ago, NoKidsAndCounting said:

I think if Jessa and Ben had a girl, would they choose "Veronica?"

"Veronica One of the more memorable stories in the New Testament surrounds this name—Veronica is the woman who wiped the face of Jesus as he dragged his cross to Calvary (her cloth was instantly imprinted with his face). The name means "victory bringer".

I don't believe Veronica actually appears in the Bible, but rather is part of Catholic Sacred tradition. 

So I doubt Ben would be down with that. Though it would be funny to have a kid named Spurgeon and a kid named after an exclusively Catholic saint. ?

29 minutes ago, Glasgowghirl said:

I am at University studying Social Sciences with the hope of teaching History at High school and I don't plan on forcing any pupil's to do homework.

When you guys say "homework" what do you mean?

I understand not wanting first and second graders spending their entire evenings on worksheets, but no homework for high schoolers? Are you including papers and projects in this?

I had tons of homework in my AP classes (textbook and additional source reading, short essays and full term papers to write) and am glad for it. Those were the classes that prepared me for the difficulty and demands of college.

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5 hours ago, dpndetfarm said:

So can I ask you all to take a look at what this choosing to keep your child out of school for another year can actually do and probably has done to the US school system.

1. How do you know, as a parent who has not seen how the class your child should be going into, that your child is or is not mature/ready/fill in the blank to be in kindergarten. 

2. I have heard it doesn't hurt to hold them out. Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but it does directly impact the other students in the class. Especially when children are held out because they will be a little bigger, better at sports, emotionally more mature and so on.

3. There are many children, although fewer and fewer, who go to school based on the cut off because it is the cut off for a reason. The reason is that, after study and research, the school system has determined that the vast majority of children are ready for kindergarten if they are 5 by that date.

Our cut off date was September 30th when my kids were in school.  Now it is September 1st. When you decide your child should wait a year and their birthday is in May or June your child is well over a year older than the youngest children. Grade school is when lots of growing happens and size differences are already significant. You hold your kid out of course they will excell at sports. Your child could be a foot taller than another child and weigh 15 or 20 pounds more than the younger child. Your choosing to keep your child out puts the younger, yet properly aged child at a huge disadvantage. You have changed the "bottom of the pile". (Generic yous all around) A child who could have been seen as an outstanding athlete lost his/her spot because here school sports are played by grade. Your child eclipses another child acedemically, not because they are more intelligent, but because they are more than a year older .  Educationally you have  put a child who will probably be more advanced learningwise than the child with a later birthday who goes to school when the schools says he/she should. 

We used to learn letters and match items, and otherwise be more Montessori like in kindergarten.  Or more kindergarten like in kindergarten.   Now, with the kids in kindergarten getting older and older it has turned into what 1st grade used to be.

Keeping kids out without a professional reason certainly helps your child perhaps, but over time it is pushing our younger grades to be more and more academic in nature. It is putting the kids who start on time at a disadvantage, and it will keep spiraling.  If all children who didn't have a diagnosed reason to wait a year went to school when they should they would actually have a longer time to be kids and the academics could phase in at a more gradual pace.

Just my 5000 cents worth. Sorry for the book. Hope it makes a little sense.  Yes I do have experience. Yes I have my masters in early and primary education. No I am not telling anyone what to do.  Homework is evil.

Just wanted to say I appreciate the book! You have definitely mentioned some points I never thought about!

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2 hours ago, nausicaa said:

I don't believe Veronica actually appears in the Bible, but rather is part of Catholic Sacred tradition. 

You are right. Veronica is not in the new testament. Like many other women whose names were written out of the story. Some believe that Veronica was the nameless "woman who touched Jesus's garment" who is mentioned somewhere in Luke.

She is in the apogryphal Gosple of Nikodemus, though.

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I think something else for parents to consider is what the cut off date is in other areas. In my state it is (was?) September 1, which means kids from states where it's January 1 who moved were suddenly very young for the grade, especially with December birthdays. They also often had to test into the grade they'd been in and have a high-stakes test determine if they'd remain in the 5th grade (for example) or jump back a year. Also, I've seen it cause issues for kids with birthdays that are mid-August or later because they are not 18 when they start college, which sometimes adds extra difficulty (parental permission for things most students sign on their own, needing additional help for the first few months of college because they cannot go to a trampoline park for example with their friends without a parental waiver). I think that parents should consider if a state they may move to soon has a different cut off date and what the long term consequences may be if they're in one of the states with a January 1 (for example) cut off date. I also think that talking to a kid's preschool teacher about the decision is a great idea. Most kids I know with summer birthdays had preschool teachers help determine if they were ready for kindergarten or not. In my area it's usually fairly evenly split whether kids with birthdays within a couple months of the cut off are held back or not.

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