Kindergarten Stress

Sam brought home a paper from kindergarten today stating that they were going to start having spelling tests each Thursday, over three of the thirty high frequency words that the kids have been working on all year. It was accompanied by a note that said "Since your child has already mastered all of the high frequency words, he will be given three new words to learn each week." So we congratulated Sam, told him how proud we were of him, and I was rather impressed with this individualized instruction. But the joy wore off when I went to study with him, and realized he had never worked with his three words before (they are After, Again, and About). So tonight I just had him write each word three times. And it occurs to me that I will be teaching him these three words each week, on top of two soccer practices and one baseball practice. Why couldn't they have started spelling tests in the winter when there was nothing to do?

On top of that, in April and May we are supposed to be teaching our child their phone number, address, and how to tie their shoes. The tying the shoe part was awful with Maria - she never had any shoes to tie. While I realize it's impossible to tie 25 kids' shoes all day, I do get frustrated that the school request we only send our children in Velcro shoes, then expect us to teach them to learn to tie, when the child sees no point in learning this skill. I had trouble teaching Maria, and so I am worried it will be difficult with Sam too.

Not to mention that this past weekend we finally started addressing Sam's speech issues - mainly saying his L's and R's. The speech therapist at school told me last year that these were age appropriate problems that didn't need to be addressed until first grade if they were still going on. I have been very nervous about addressing this, since any stress about speaking can bring on his stuttering again. And I didn't address it with Maria until she started first grade - I always assumed she would just start doing it on her own and she never did. So we decided to see what he could do, with the agreement that if there were any stuttering issues we would quit. And I learned that if we start saying "La-la-la," he can say L words correctly if I help him with the starting sound. So now I am trying to make him go back and correct words that start with L - breaking his old habit. And most of the time he is O.K. with it and goes back to say it correctly. But he gets frustrated if I do words with L in the middle as well, so I am giving up on those for now. And I was hoping to master L words in a few weeks (a few months may be more likely) and then move onto R words. But now with spelling words and tying shoes and everything else, it may be too much. Time will tell.