By Guest Blogger & Smarty Mom, Janelle Nash
Last year, we were wrestling when to start our daughter in kindergarten (To TK or Not to TK).
I know you’ve all been waiting patiently for the update. It’s your lucky day.
We decided to put our July-birthday girl in TK. Blake was five when the TK academic year started and had all of the skills needed for kindergarten on paper.
My biggest wishes for her were gaining self-confidence, social skills and enjoying no-pressure learning.
In TK, Blake really blossomed – she developed deep friendships with her classmates, learned to love reading and how to stand up for herself in tougher situations. Also, she got to spend every afternoon with her little sister (and fight over who got to be Elsa).
It was still hard to drop her off at Beverly Woods for kindergarten this year. Even though she’s one of the oldest in her class, she’s still one of the smaller kids. We had a few days of anxiety of a new school experience – “What if I don’t make any friends? What if I’m not the best student in class?” – but she has adjusted well and loves it.
I think choosing TK worked for our family in a lot of ways. School is a little easy for her right now, but the curriculum for kindergarten gets pretty tough quickly.
I’m glad we got another year with this sweet, smart and increasingly independent girl who is already embarrassed to kiss us at the bus stop.
2 comments
Hey Janelle-
We TK’d Izzy for the exact same reasons you chose for Blake. I’m proud to report that she’s in 5th grade and is doing awesome. It was the best decision we ever made for her. BTW, she’s still the smallest in her class, even with kids 1-1/12 years younger. I tell her every day that she will own that petite body of hers – one day, everyone will want to be tiny just like she is:-) She’s finally buying into it!
Forgot to mention we did TK at Quail Hollow Preschool – great program and teachers (Christy Teli and Chrissie Abbott)!