My daughter is in JK, loves it. Daycare on her days out of school, loves that too. The daycare and the school are attached and somewhat work together, but not really affiliated.
My daughter comes home with school papers and newsletters and all kinds of info for the parents. Usually she has no idea about what these letters say, in fact, she's never known anything about what is in these letters.
A few weeks ago, I pick her up and while she's in the backseat she's struggling with excitement to get this letter out of her bag. She starts rambling on about this FREE skating thing with FREE hot chocolate. It's quite evident that she's overly eager to attend.
While stopped, I take a look at the paper to find that this free skating day is on a Sunday when she will be with her father two hours from home. I knew it was going to break her heart when I had to tell her about this. So, I did come up with a solution which was to call her father and his family to see if they would be able to take her skating. At first that was not a consolation to her as she was like "but what about the FREE hot chocolate" so I explained that we can get her some hot chocolate no matter what.
So, even though I know there was no intended harm by telling her, I think the teacher should be a little more aware that not all kids are able to attend these types of things. If it's something happening during school hours, I can understand them telling the kids as the majority can attend, but why tell a 4 year old about this type of thing when the teacher doesn't know jack about her schedule outside of school. Also, I don't know how to skate, so even if she would have been home, I would have had to make arrangements (and I would have tried) to get someone who can skate to take her.
Oh, and I sent a little note to the school after this incident asking the teacher nicely and politely to not tell her about things that are being done on the weekend for this exact reason. I acknowledged that I knew the teacher had no bad intentions and all, but to understand our situation.
Then a couple weeks later, she comes home with another letter that she knows about regarding bringing your pets from home to school to meet the class. OK...great education, however, I have 2 cats, one adult male and 1 kitten who was just neutered and had been spraying all over my house. The kitten is AMAZING with my daughter, they're best friends. And yes, it's a cute idea and great learning for those kids, but A)what about allergies? I have to pay attention to everything I buy for school food because of peanut allergies, but they don't have enough decency to inquire about kids animal allergies before arranging this type of thing. and B) in order for me to take the cat or cats in, i have to arrange time off work, stay there while the animal is there and then return the animal home - not an easy task for me.
I tried once again to come up with an alternative solution - told her we could by a siamese fighting fish and she could take him into school and she could even keep him in her room when she brought him home - nope, that didn't jive with her - her heart is set on taking the kitten to class.
The other thing was this letter they sent home asking for $2 for a "bullying workshop" - I didn't think much of it, but apparantly, when the kids that attend the daycare came back from school on the day they had this workshop, they were misusing the word "bullying" and were using it to describe the most simple forms of child conflict. The daycare was very alarmed as they were not informed or invited to attend this workshop and now had to deal with the after affects. Most of the young ones that attended this were too young to understand how to identify the form of bullying in the same context as being taught about at the workshop.
Obviously I haven't been involved with the school system that long, but I'm a little ticked about these two situations. I've also brought up some of my concerns to the staff at the daycare, they too have some issues with the school and how the school operates with the children.
Would like some others opinions on all of this.
My daughter comes home with school papers and newsletters and all kinds of info for the parents. Usually she has no idea about what these letters say, in fact, she's never known anything about what is in these letters.
A few weeks ago, I pick her up and while she's in the backseat she's struggling with excitement to get this letter out of her bag. She starts rambling on about this FREE skating thing with FREE hot chocolate. It's quite evident that she's overly eager to attend.
While stopped, I take a look at the paper to find that this free skating day is on a Sunday when she will be with her father two hours from home. I knew it was going to break her heart when I had to tell her about this. So, I did come up with a solution which was to call her father and his family to see if they would be able to take her skating. At first that was not a consolation to her as she was like "but what about the FREE hot chocolate" so I explained that we can get her some hot chocolate no matter what.
So, even though I know there was no intended harm by telling her, I think the teacher should be a little more aware that not all kids are able to attend these types of things. If it's something happening during school hours, I can understand them telling the kids as the majority can attend, but why tell a 4 year old about this type of thing when the teacher doesn't know jack about her schedule outside of school. Also, I don't know how to skate, so even if she would have been home, I would have had to make arrangements (and I would have tried) to get someone who can skate to take her.
Oh, and I sent a little note to the school after this incident asking the teacher nicely and politely to not tell her about things that are being done on the weekend for this exact reason. I acknowledged that I knew the teacher had no bad intentions and all, but to understand our situation.
Then a couple weeks later, she comes home with another letter that she knows about regarding bringing your pets from home to school to meet the class. OK...great education, however, I have 2 cats, one adult male and 1 kitten who was just neutered and had been spraying all over my house. The kitten is AMAZING with my daughter, they're best friends. And yes, it's a cute idea and great learning for those kids, but A)what about allergies? I have to pay attention to everything I buy for school food because of peanut allergies, but they don't have enough decency to inquire about kids animal allergies before arranging this type of thing. and B) in order for me to take the cat or cats in, i have to arrange time off work, stay there while the animal is there and then return the animal home - not an easy task for me.
I tried once again to come up with an alternative solution - told her we could by a siamese fighting fish and she could take him into school and she could even keep him in her room when she brought him home - nope, that didn't jive with her - her heart is set on taking the kitten to class.
The other thing was this letter they sent home asking for $2 for a "bullying workshop" - I didn't think much of it, but apparantly, when the kids that attend the daycare came back from school on the day they had this workshop, they were misusing the word "bullying" and were using it to describe the most simple forms of child conflict. The daycare was very alarmed as they were not informed or invited to attend this workshop and now had to deal with the after affects. Most of the young ones that attended this were too young to understand how to identify the form of bullying in the same context as being taught about at the workshop.
Obviously I haven't been involved with the school system that long, but I'm a little ticked about these two situations. I've also brought up some of my concerns to the staff at the daycare, they too have some issues with the school and how the school operates with the children.
Would like some others opinions on all of this.
