|
|
Post by frankieb on Apr 4, 2014 17:36:21 GMT
o,
My son is 6 at the end of November this year - does that make him pre-K age, or kindergarten age? The school has told me that he will do pre-K on site at Rakah but I find this hard to imagine working out for him - he's done two terms of Reception in the UK (full-time school, 8:30 - 4:15) and is also quite advanced so I think pre-K wouldn't keep him busy enough for just one afternoon.. we're arriving there in about a week so I'm a bit concerned about this. Any chance they got the age wrong and he should actually be in Kindergarten? Or - any chance he could be put into Kindergarten if "assessed" and deemed worthy?!
Thanks to anyone who can advise here.
Frankie
|
|
|
|
Post by vpainter on Apr 5, 2014 20:12:00 GMT
Again, please read about the difference in the two curriculums in the first discussion group on the forum index page: Frequently Asked Questions.
|
|
|
|
Post by UmmRiyam on Apr 6, 2014 8:02:19 GMT
If your son is 5 now with a birthday in November, then he will be in K4. My daughter is in the same situation, but her birthday is in September. I don't know about the Rakah preschool, but in UDH my daughter has a wonderful teacher who knows her strengths and challenges her. Even though she knows a lot and has started reading, she still has fun and learns. I don't think your son will be too bored, and it might help him actually to make the transition better if he is able to go to K4 and make some friends in a low stress environment than be thrown into kindergarten towards the end of the year when he will be the youngest and may be behind and stressed out about that on top of being stressed about making such a huge move. He will be more confident moving into K being one of the older kids and having the extra knowledge and skills that he does.
|
|
|
|
Post by frankieb on Apr 7, 2014 10:26:39 GMT
Thanks very much UmmRiyam for putting it that way. What you've said makes total sense and I feel less concerned now. I think it was really just to do with him having come from full days in Reception and looking at just afternoons in Pre-K - it sounded as though he'd almost be going back to nursery! Which obviously didn't sound good.. but I can see it's just a different system etc. and I'm going to stop worrying and just go with it. As you say it's only one term and good prep. I've been worrying a lot about this so you've really helped me out.
Frankie
|
|
Maursh
Senior Member
Posts: 169
|
Post by Maursh on Apr 9, 2014 9:33:56 GMT
Frankie,
You don't mention what payroll you will be on nor what your long term educational aspirations for your children are. If you are UK payroll and have in mind that your son will return to a UK education system at some future stange then you need to weigh up the differences between US and UK cirrculums right now. Vpainter refers you to a sticky post and you can also find a lot of useful information from the internet.
Very briefly the UK moves to formal education much faster but blends it with imaginative play. The US tends to start formal education later emphasing social interaction far more, but then expects children to really focus once formal education begins. Each systems has it's own merits and drawbacks but critically, very few children can move between the two cirrulums without some level of stress. I know of children the same age as your son coming from UK reception going into (pre-)K4 who have found it difficult to be back in half day "nursery" learning ABC when they can already read. This will of course be an individual experience and some children might well benefit from not learning to read until later. The class size for the pre-school in Rakkah is about 25 to 30 children so I believe it would be difficult for a teacher to tailor to an individual child's needs even with classroom assistance.
If you are planning to go on with a UK education programme then I strongly remcommend that you speak to your reloc adviser about the EAP that Aramco offer and contact BISAK and Dharhan British Grammer: two schools in the region who offer a british education.
HTH
|
|
|
|
Post by UmmRiyam on Apr 9, 2014 17:40:11 GMT
wow! 25-30 is a lot of children for preschool age. How many helpers are there? In UDH both of my girls (K3 and K4) have about 15 kids in their class with 2 helpers in addition to the teacher, so a ratio of 5 kids to 1 adult when all the kids are there.
|
|
Maursh
Senior Member
Posts: 169
|
Post by Maursh on Apr 10, 2014 7:31:18 GMT
The ratio for K4 is 5 to 1.
|
|
Wutz
Senior Member
Posts: 143
|
Post by Wutz on Apr 10, 2014 12:50:26 GMT
I met a couple of the Rakah pre-K teachers on a DOG (Dhahran Outing Group) trip to Tanzania last fall, and I can say I only wish that my teachers had been so fun, enthusiatic and all-around engaged when I was a young sprout (my 11-yo daughter was asking "Daddy - are they really teachers? They seem too fun!"). They really are wonderful teachers, and I'm sure your kids will be in good hands.
Wutz
|
|
Maursh
Senior Member
Posts: 169
|
Post by Maursh on Apr 11, 2014 18:14:22 GMT
I just wanted to emphasise what Wutz has said. There is definitely no issue with the quality of teaching or teachers at the pre-school, which are both, of course, excellent.
|
|
|
|
Post by frankieb on May 5, 2014 18:04:56 GMT
thanks for all these replies, i've only just seen them - sadly i didn't know there was a box to check to be notified of replies.. but, as it turns out, we're STILL not in Rakah. We've taken an unusual route it seems towards obtaining our visas, since we are applying from Bahrain rather than the UK. My husband has lived here for 3 years and we decided to just move out here at the beginning of Easter break so that we could all hang out while we waited for our visas.. turns out that complicated things somewhat as we never had a relocation advisor, HR don't know what to do with us, and we're pretty much on our own now trying to figure out how to get medicals and police reports etc. all lined up for a visa application from here. We had no idea it would be this complicated! We have a tutor for the kids until we're sorted - they're fine, they think it's all just a massive vacation with some tutoring thrown in (it is, really) but I'm not fine.. I work from home for a magazine and that hasn't been going so well! What a muddle. Oh well.. it'll be sorted soon, but Dash might well be going into Kindergarten anyway by the time we get there! lol
I've got to put some thought into where they'll go to school later once we're done being in KSA, whenever that might be. That's a toughie for us as we have all sorts of plans that might materialise.. but still worth giving a bit of thought. Thanks for the pointers everyone!
Frankie
|
|
