Maryland has now begun a full day kindergarten and people are worried that play time is over. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun:

She has only nine months to get her 5- and 6-year-olds to identify the sequential property of numbers using the calendar, learn the alphabet, recognize letter sounds, learn how to sort by color and number, and learn to share and play nice with one another.

You have to be joking! It is stressing them out to get this accomplished? I understand that my children are brilliant;) but I think this is an easily accessible goal. I am also shocked that there is an all day kindergarten program that doesn’t expect them to be reading at the end.

The need for programs like this make me seriously doubt the teaching ability of these teachers. There is a mention that there will also be homework. I guess I wonder what these teachers are doing to teach. You have a 5 or 6 year old for a full day and still need them to take home work for their parents to teach them how to do? Though it does seem that they are doing an all day program to allow for some individual teaching. You would think that would be the time that the remainder of the students could be working on homework.

I think this just proves that more on its own doesn’t fix the system. More money, more time with out a new approach obviously isn’t going to be successful so you are wasting the money and the time.