Child Garden

Friday morning we took Kirk in for his Kindergarten pre-screening testing. It's required by the state of Minnesota for all children attending public schools. There were three parts to the screening: mental development, physical development, and bureaucracy.

We had a lot of paperwork to fill out, some of it immediately identified by Mr. b as remnants of the "progressive" programs instituted by New Dealers. Then we all went in to meet with the first of three ladies. She had Kirk build small towers of blocks, do some counting, pick the correct opposites, match shapes, do simple drawing, things like that. As a parent it was incredibly difficult to keep my mouth shut. I wanted to nudge him in the right direction, give him hints, or simply laugh at his hilarious attempts or failures. There were several instances where he got something wrong that he knows perfectly well how to do. But I suppose having the patience to go through this process is part of the whole "readiness" idea.

Next we went to get his eyes checked. That seemed silly to me since obviously Kirk wears glasses. He wasn't interested in their old school vision chart and the lack of friendliness on the part of the woman administering this portion of the exam certainly didn't help. We gave up on that and tried to do the hearing test. But she accidentally stepped on Kirk's foot and he cried and cried and cried and we gave up on that, too. I have two forms for medical professionals to fill out now. He's got his eye check-up next week but the hearing one will have to wait for his next physical in July. I remember doing all these tests in elementary school and really enjoying the hearing one especially. Mr. b says he remembers them, too.

Lastly we met with a lady to review all the results. Kirk's age bracket, 3.8-3.9 years, needed to score an 18 out of 48 on the mental stuff. He got a 32. So no worries there. Basically, everything is on track and there are no areas of concern. We found out which elementary school he'll attend - and that he'll ride the bus - and that's about it. It was an interesting process and definitely a milestone. It's hard to believe I'll have a "school aged" child soon but he'll start Kindergarten next year!