Recently Brigit informed me that all five-year-olds go to kindergarten and she wanted to go too. Hmmm. I know where this is coming from – the other kids with whom she spends her weekdays. Some are starting this fall, and others have older siblings already in a traditional classroom school.

I am sure it is doubly confusing for because David and I use the word school a bit differently than most. When she goes to her awesome ‘pre-school’, which has her running around outside and climbing mountains about six hours every day. She is learning to socialize and communicate and share, just like all four year olds should. When David takes her on an adventure we call it Brigit-Daddy school, because she is learning about her surroundings and people and the woods and reading and how to have silly fun. Other times there are adventures called Brigit-Mommy school. It may be a trip to see movie, sit on the beach, play at the park or just the grocery store, but learning happens, which is what schooling is all about.

Our approach falls under what is generally called unschooling. We have relied on the concept for the past year and plan to continue doing so. It does not include a traditional classroom. It relies on the child to pursue interests as she chooses. It is more of a project-based approach to learning, as opposed to stove piped subjects. it is something that very much fits our family’s day to day life and Brigit’s natural curiosity.

We have talked to her about school before, but turning five any day now includes more and more discussions about classroom school, carried over from her time with her buddies headed there in August. I asked her what she plans on doing in kindergarten. She is not sure, so I prompted her. Ironically I recently looked up what was expected from a kindergarten ‘graduate’, so I could discuss the issue intelligently with those who are firm believers in classroom schooling. Here is what I discovered.

At the end of kindergarten kids should:
-Follow print from left to right and from top to bottom of a page when stories are read aloud
-Understand the relationship between print and pictures
-Recognize the shapes and names of all the letters in the alphabet (both uppercase and lowercase letters)
-Write many uppercase and lowercase letters on her own
-Understand that spoken words are made up of separate sounds
-Recognize and makes rhymes
-Identify words that have the same beginning sound
-Know a number of letter-sound relationships
-Understand that the order of letters in a written word represents the order of sounds in a spoken word
-Recognize some common words on sight, such as a, the, I, said, you, is, are
-Listen carefully to books read aloud
-Ask and answer questions about stories
-Use what he already knows to help him understand a story
-Predict what will happen in a story based on pictures or information in the story
-Retell and/or act out stories
-Know the difference between “made-up” (fiction) and “real” (nonfiction) books and the difference between stories
-Use phonemic awareness and letter knowledge to spell and write words
-Begin to spell some words correctly
-Write his own first and last name and the first names of some friends, classmates, or family members
-Write some letters and words as they are said to her
-Play with and is curious about words and language
-Use new words in her own speech
-Know and use words that are important to school work, such as the names for colors, shapes and numbers
-Know and use words that are important to daily life, such as street names and addresses and names for community workers

She actually has about 95% of the list figured out. The accomplishments by the end of a year of sitting in a classroom sounds pretty basic, and maybe the list IS basic. I don’t know. I am not a trained educator. Not that you could test her, because the moment she figures out you are trying to figure her out, she stops letting you and clams up. Careful observation from afar and subtle scheming reveals her skill sets. I am not saying she will be bored if she goes to a structured Kindergarten class, but I worry what will happen when she already knows what is being taught in a lesson and wants to do something else, rather than sitting through information she already knows. Will she be bored? Is the classroom set up for such situations? Will she perceive situations as ‘punishment’ for already knowing something? The ‘punishment’ happened to both me and her father, and we don’t want her to experience it.

We would love to do full time unschooling instead of a classroom, but Brigit wants to go to school. Since she was born we have planned on not putting her into a structured school, but our perfect plan to be available to do so by now has not happened quite as expected. We are thinking of letting her try school. If she does not like it, we can change our priorities and do it at home. If she does like it, and we do supplemental experiences and projects, we will feel good about it and she will be happy. How can that harm? We may just have to see…