Where has all the play in early childhood gone???

It is spring time, which is the traditional time for parents to start planning and applying to preschools and kdg for the following year. I am very non traditional. We don't use preschools or even schools but there was a time when we did. I remember those times with a bit of a cold shiver. My only child to have attend a preschool or traditional school kdg did so 10 - 12 years ago. I wasn't so impressed with how the push for less play and more structured academics was then. Today I am shocked and scared for kids futures. I read a comment the other day that a persons child had scored really well on there end of year preschool testing. This was for a three year old child. It prompted me to take yet another look at just where early childhood education is in this country.

Early childhood is thought of from birth to age 8. Yes really age 8 not say 3 which is where i get the feeling a lot of people who put the end of early childhood. Before age five or six should be a time when a child focuses on play, getting to know the world around them, social and self help skills not academics. If academics enter the picture it should be in a play formate and because a child is interested not because it was on the schedule and someone decided that in order to preform better on a test at ten they needed to be reading by five.

A very scary trend seems to be happening where children are having to give up play and parts of there childhoods and replace it with academic circle times, seat work, and standardized tests very early. As early as three. Ages ago it was just the ubber competative parent that was pushing reading, writting and arithmatic on thier three year olds so they could be fast tracked into the right schools. Now days it's become common!

Children entering pre K programs are being tested for academic skills before entering! They are three and four year olds they shouldn't have academic skills. They should know what there favorite story is, Have a favorite animal, be able to dig in the dirt or sand, know how to go down a slide, how to squish the playdough, how to cut paper into a million tiny pieces and then use glue to stick it to stuff, make a great and messy painting, maybe have developed a love for go fish or candyland but not academic skills. A child that knows there alphabet (in more than one language as well), can count to 100, draw six shapes on request, identify all the colors on the color wheel, and know the presidents should be an exeption not the expectation. I may be exagerating ther a bit but not by much.

Standardized testing in kdg classrooms is becoming normal. A standardized test where you sit down with a paper test packet and pencil and fill in the blanks or bubbles for five year olds??????? I guess that's what happens when pre K is where you are suppose to still for long amounts of time, and enter knowing your shapes, colors, full name, how to share, and the majority of your letters and numberS. Heck that used to be the list of things you needed to master by the end of kindergarden. By Kindergarden they then expect you to write short stories, do dailey worksheets of math problems, and if you can't read by November you are labled as behind and in danger of failing.

Don't get me started on my thoughts about homework for the sake of homework, for the under twelve crowd. Pre K and Kdg kids have weekly worksheet homework packets to complete in addition to all the worksheets they do at school. Assigned worksheets are not developmentally appropriate for this group, free style coloring and writting is!

Recess is disapearing as well. All day kindergardens often only have one 30 minute break for it a day. 1st and second graders have even less and sometimes none. Move on up a grade or two and it's common for recess to be a purely optional activity based on the workload of the day or the teachers desire to provide it. Little bodies need to move and they need to do it a lot! Adults think and work better when they have breaks to talk to someone or strtch thier legs and just have a few moments of downtime so why on earth would people begin to think children can do without it and funtion anywhere near normally?

I watched a news special on inovative teaching techniques. It involved several classrooms where teachers had adopted some form of physical movement into the lessons. It went on to say how the kids learned better when they were able to wiggle, bounce and jump. Great bit DUH. Kids are like energizer bunnies they have more energy than they know what to do with and it distracts even the most interested kid from absorbing anything, when did people lose sight of this fact? Instead of spending money on exercise balls, special wiggle foot peddels on desk, and all kinds of tramploines and jumpropes for the classroom why not just add recess back into the day. I'll be brazen and say they should have three or four recesses or decompression free times. I remember having three recesses in grade school, every single day. Morning, lunch and afternoon. We also had PE at least every other day. Even as a ten year old I remember being ready to burst out of my skull by the time each recess came along because I just needed out of my seat and away form the books, chalkboards and trying to focus on what the teacher was saying.

With lack of recess, hyper focus on early academics and paper seat work, craming so much into the day of older kids that they never get to leave there desks until lunch of a bathroom break it's no wonder teachers are complaining about classroom control and kids behaviors. I think educators in this country have lost sight of appropriate developmental abilities for children. Heck at times I think they have forgotten they are dealing with children all together. I know a whole lot of parents have. Kids are not tiny adults, they don't function or think like them. they can not process and handle high preasure demands they way adults do. Pushing three and four year olds into academics, listing five years olds as failing for not reading or giving them standardized tests, taking away recess and replacing it with another math lesson for six and seven year olds and, repalcing recess with group activities and bouncing on an excercise ball while listening to a history lesson for old kids is most definately high preasure and stress for kids.

I would like to burn every single standardized test in the world and then deleate them from all the computers. Then we could start over from scratch and maybe realize we are destroying kids in this country by pushing academics younger and young all in the name or our worshing the almighty standardized test.

The more I learn the more I know we are doing the best thing for our children by not putting them in that kinda childhood removing rat race.