Kindergarten question

I think parents have a hard time judging where their kids should be when it’s their first.

Becca has started the school district’s ‘Jump Start to Kindergarten’ program.  She has been bringing home school work for the first time. Today there was a sheet explaining what they had been learning this week.

So here is my question.  How many kids make it to 5 without knowing colors?  basic counting?  the alphabet?  simple shapes?  Every day they cut out pictures from magazine that start with the letter of the day.  That just seems too basic to me.

I have no way of knowing if she is ahead or right on track.  For all I know, this is just teaching kids learning skills with knowledge they should already have.

Why I am a bit concerned.  A few memories from first grade.

Being held back and stopping reading for 3 weeks until the next fastest kid could catch up to me so the teacher wouldn’t have to teach just me at that speed. 

Getting in trouble for rushing through the classwork and not using multiple crayon colors to draw my pictures to match my words.  The teacher made me redo it with more than one color.  I was bored with it, which is why I only used one color.  It was red-violet.  And yes, I am still bitter.

Whichever kid finished their work first got to scratch the teacher’s back.  After quite awhile of this, I started slowing down on my work.

Becca came home with a sheet of paper on which she had drawn a picture to represent each season.  The teacher wrote underneath what Becca said they were.  For Fall there is a pile of leaves.  For Winter it is a pile of snow.  Which brought the single crayon flashback to me.

Maybe it isn’t a big deal.  Maybe I just enjoy worrying about things.  But it does worry me.