Becky... Have you looked into a private christian school? That sounds like it may be a good option for her if one is near. I love that idea. The only problem I have is the one that is near our house (1mi. away) is very, very strict. Avery read all the rules and such and cried. She begged me not to send her to that school. Not all christian schools are like that though and most rules are pretty good ones IMHO. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that one out at you (like you hadn't already thought of it, lol).
Becky, we will get you a Mother's Day card and I am sure when Jeannie is older and can get the card herself she will. Hang in there girl it's hard. But, you know what is best for her.
Oh, yeah, Missy, I looked at private schools. I like Montessori, myself. We visited them awhile back. There is one other school I'm looking at, where they have a homeschool option. The child goes there for specials and field trips, but the drawback is you must use their curriculum. When we looked there for Kindergarten they were vague about what all they used, except to specifically say they used Abeka for math. I couldn't even get them to say what they would cover in different subjects. They were going through a transition period in administration at the time, so maybe that was the problem. I looked at one school where the tuition was 4,000.00 and the teachers were former h.s. moms! Buddy, pay ME the 4,000.00 cause I'm doing that stuff now! That school closed, though, because of internal issues. I'm still looking at pvt. schools as an option.
The private school my dd attended for prek and k was great, but they couldn't give me a straight answer about curriculum. This was after we had already started going there. I really wanted to know what textbooks/curriculum programs and what skills were going to be taught. The teachers gave me vague answers. Finally, when report card conferences rolled around I could see from their report card what skills were being taught. I told her that was exactly what I was asking about at the beginning of school. She didn't get what I was asking I guess. I can't see paying a ton of money for teachers that aren't certified either. I certainly wouldn't go that route. Like you said, we could get paid that for all we do.
There's no such thing as textbooks for pre-K! And even in kindergarten, I doubt there's much. For one thing, kids don't read that well yet. Montessori is designed to be kid-directed. That means there may NOT be a set curriculum. So the fact that there really isn't one doesn't mean it's a "bad" program. You can easily have several kids doing very different things.
Montessori does have a curriculum, but it is kid directed. The kids choose what they want to do, they are expected to finish what they choose, and there's little influence from the teacher. That's what I liked- the responsiblity placed on the kids and the resulting maturity. The other thing I liked was how the older kids helped the youger ones. There was a sense of belonging even among those mixed ages.
Pre-K's and K's do have curriculum's, some just don't have "textbooks", persay because they really can't read the textbooks anyhow. There are curriculums though, many to choose from I may add. On a side note though, every pre-k program should have at least a guideline that the teachers have to follow. Any place that doesn't have that, I would not take my child to. If you walk into a preschool and ask "can I ask what your weekly plans are and what components you do every day?", they should be able to tell you. The director/boss should also be able to tell you what expectations she/he has for her/his teacher's lesson's and the minimal requirements for each weekly lesson plan. Anything less, is not worth it. Sorry to rant on...I hate pre-k programs that are lazy!
As I wait for Jeannie at art class I hear the same activities get done each week, so I can see what Jen's saying. Art class is in a building where a preschool meets. This past Thursday the teacher was helping the little ones create a poem.
Oh, when I said her school was not giving me all the info I needed it wasn't because they didn't have a curriculum. This was a very nice school who only taught to advanced students. It's just the teachers seemed intimidated by my questions or something. Maybe I thought this because I was a teacher or because they were not giving me the answers I needed. My point was that they had a good curriculum, but I didn't really find out all that it entailed until later (from just seeing the report cards and things they used in class). I'm sure, however, that there are plenty of prek/k programs that do not even know what their state's curriculum requires or their school for that matter. I taught K so I expected them to tell me what I told parents about our school curriculum. My students didn't have workbooks for every subject but I had teacher manuals. I knew the skills I had to teach and that is all that I was asking for when I questioned her teachers. I probably didn't make that too clear before.
Jackie... I'm not sure you were replying to my message or not, but PreK can and sometimes does have workbooks/teacher books. The school I was talking about was a year advanced. So, when my dd was in PreK it was really K. They used K books and when there wasn't a wkbk then there were teacher manuals. So, some schools would actually use workbooks/textbooks. I think when people want to know the curriculum/books used they may also be referring to what programs they use. Teaching K in ps I used Success in Reading and Writing. This was a teacher book but a great reading and writing curriculum for k. We had a big meeting every year at the beginning of school w/ K parents to go over our whole curriculum. We told what programs we used and what workbooks there were (usually Math and some phonics later). Anyway, I just wanted to clarify my post from earlier. I hope this one is clearer. My head is spinning right now. I either have an ear infection or severe sinus pressure causing me to have vertigo. Gotta go!
