Friday, May 13, 2011

The Continents: The Bane of my Existence

P79

This week, D-man brought home yet another map of the continents. For three plus years, he has known his continents. No teacher since his wonderful preschool teacher has pushed him to do more. At least he got "extra credit" for labeling some or the countries he knows (and yes, these are thanks to preschool too).

Maybe my expectations are too high, but I've heard that the goal of a school should be that each student learns something new everyday. Is that hard? You bet, but we owe it to the kids to make sure that school is appropriately challenging for each student.

Do his teachers know that he knows the continents? You bet. Let's brush up on other countries or the states (given it has been 2 years since preschool he has certainly forgot some of these by now). Or how about extra work on discovering some interesting facts about these continents? Anything that is more than repetitive and mind numbing. D-man still thirsts for knowledge. I just worry that more and more of boring, unchallenging work will lead to a loss of this appetite. And truly, just being ok with mediocrity is not good for the future for our kids. Indeed, I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn't happen for my children. Starting with the continents.

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