Other things I learned about Kindergarten
KI NDERGARTEN i s a common starting point for the education of people through the school setup. It is usually associated with things such as playing, coloring, songs, and dances which make it more different from the more structured, advanced, and serious year levels in school.
However, there are things I learned about Kindergarten that go beyond the common stuff some people know.
There is a need for order in class because of safety and discipline concerns although giving the pupils a little bit of leeway to learn from their experiences or to come up with their own ideas would not be that harmful.
I remember one time when one of the pupils took a test which included counting things. This pupil wrote the number of each object (i.e. first one is number one, second one is number two, so forth and so on). Instead of telling her to count silently, I commended her for her brilliant way of working smart rather than working hard. She told me she does not want to forget the number when something or someone interrupts her as she counts – this is a display of creative thinking.
Another thing I learned is that teaching in Kindergarten has a bigger role to play in t he development of t he child because they are just starting to learn more and more about the world around them and things such as writing, counting, reading, and calculating.
Teaching kindergarteners is not for everybody because not everybody is willing to do
things like helping them clean themselves or their vomit and wiping their noses.
Even if there are learning standards to adhere to, it i s best not to push them so hard to learn everything immediately because they are just starting as learners. What should be done is to focus on milestones in the development of the pupils.
I a l s o l e a r n e d t h a t sometimes, there i s too much focus on learning the academic stuff that things such as values and life skills are forgotten or given less emphasis which contributes to how the pupils end up growing with lack of values a n d s o c i a l s k i l l s . T h e re must be a balance through integrating values and life skills into lessons especially with their age./