Alex had his kindergarden graduation and awards ceremony today. He dressed up in his best clothes and the class got up on stage and sang the presidents song and a Spanish song. Alex got to go to the microphone and introduce a song.

He got the sight words award for saying all his sight words which was very cool considering at first we weren’t even certain he was going to be able to finish half the sight word pages, but he did and was very proud of himself as were we.

Alex is going to take Kindergarten over again this fall but it will be all day. Originally they had a class called Transitional which you take the last quarter of Kindergarten and the 1st quarter of 1st grade. That program would have been best and its terrible they got rid of it.

Kids who started young and need extra time to mature will now have to take the entire grade over and be bored with doing the same exact thing all year. Its very unfortunate that school systems make these choices.

It reminds me of how the high challenge program I was in was dropped at Newcastle. Again a group of kids who needed more of a challenge in school was abandoned for across the bored educational neutrality.

School seems geared to the lowest common denominator to avoid alienating the kids who are struggling, but in turn alienates the kids who are more advanced.

The removal of the transitional program is opposite to this problem but the same result. They are being forced to either move ahead and be frustrated with school or stay behind and be bored with school.