A new age for kindergarten?

Check out the details of SB 1381, including how it would phase in over several years and how it might create a new, two-year kindergarten program.



A new age for kindergarten?

Kindergartners in Danielle Zavala's class at Horace Mann Elementary School use the "quiet " sign while waiting to go out to recess recently.
OC Moms



As I watched my son standing at the end of the kindergarten line -- flapping both his mouth and his arms -- I knew I had made the right decision.




Even then -- when kindergarten still had a play kitchen in one corner -- it was asking a lot of a 4-year-old. Students spent a week studying the letter "A." They traced it and glued rice to outline its shape. On Friday, they ate apples.



It's about time.

In Danielle Zavala's class at Horace Mann Elementary School in Anaheim, kindergarten feels like postgraduate work for preschool.

Apples still get a lot of attention -- but not as the letter of the week. Apple is a word in a sentence.


They build sentences starting with "I," (the "high frequency word" of the day; there are 29 more.) They read it and write it - "a stick" with "a hat" and "shoes." Each child then chooses from the list to complete sentences that begin with the words "I see..."

Irwin Mancilla reads his finished paper: "I see a red car."

"Very good," Zavala beams. "You're reading."



"Usually," Zavala notes, "the students with challenges have a fall birthday."



It's intense – and this is only day 27 for this kindergarten track.



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