Kindergarten
History of Kindergarten:
Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel opened the first kindergarten on 28 June 1840 to mark the four hundredth anniversary of Gutenberg’s discovery of movable type. Froebel created the name and the term Kindergarten for the Play and Activity Institute, which he had founded in 1837 in the village of Bad Blankenburg, in the small, former principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Thuringia, Germany. The first kindergarten in the United States was founded in Watertown, Wisconsin by Margarethe (Margaretta) Meyer Schurz (wife of activist/statesman Carl Schurz) in 1856. Margarethe Schurz initially taught five children in her home (including her own daughter Agatha) in Watertown, Wisconsin. Her success drove her to offer her education to other children as well. While Schurz’s first kindergarten was German-language, she also advocated the establishment of English-language kindergartens. The first English-language kindergarten in America was founded in 1859 in Boston by Elizabeth Peabody, who followed Schurz’s model. Schurz’s older sister Bertha Meyer Ronge opened Infant Gardens in London (1851), Manchester (1859) and Leeds (1860). The first publicly financed kindergarten in the United States was established in St. Louis in 1873 by Susan Blow.
Function:
Children attend kindergarten to learn to communicate, play, and interact with others appropriately. A teacher provides various materials and activities to motivate these children to learn the language and vocabulary of reading, mathematics, science, and computers, as well as that of music, art, and social behaviors. For children who previously have spent most of their time at home, kindergarten may serve the purpose of training them to be apart from their parents without anxiety. They are usually exposed to their first idea of friendship while they play and interact with other children on a regular basis. (source: Wikipedia)
The Kindergarten year is the third and most important year in the Primary 3-year cycle. MAC follows the DPS cut off date for Kindergarten which states a child must be 5 years old on or before October 1st. Children who have birthdays later in the fall can ‘test’ into public Kindergarten. At MAC we would like to be able to offer that opportunity to children missing the cutoff by a short period of time. To accommodate this process, we have developed a Kindergarten early admission form. It is a two part form one to be filled out by you, the other by your child’s current Primary Lead teacher, Once this form is completed it will come to me for approval. If your child’s birthday is past December 15th, they will not be eligible for Kindergarten under any circumstance; instead they will enjoy their 2nd year in Primary as a 4 year old participating in afternoon resting, then work cycle. Miss Grace will have the forms available for you this Monday, January 14th. All early admissions forms must be submitted to me by March 3rd of this year for approval, so that we can better plan for our Kindergarten program next year. It is important to understand that if your child begins his/her Kindergarten experience at MAC through early admission, DPS or any receiving Elementary school may or may not accept them without testing for 1st grade, due to their birth date being after October 1st. However; most receiving schools will accept our early admissions process and allow your child to continue on after completing our Kindergarten program. If your child meets the cut off date of Oct 1st, all public schools will see them as first grade students the year they turn 6. You would also have the option to repeat Kindergarten at your new school, the year your child would be turning 6 years of age. In most cases this would not be recommended due to the advanced work our Kindergarten child master in their final year in Primary. It is also important to take into consideration your child’s emotional and social development. If your child starts school early, they will always be one of the youngest kids in their class. Last to drive, turn 18, and so on. If you would like to set up conferences with me to discuss your options or clarify the process, please feel free to contact me over the next few weeks to do so.
Lisa Armao