Parents with children around age five are faced with a choice of enrolling their child in all-day or half-day kindergarten. When choosing between half-day or full-day kindergarten, parents should consider the following: time and available space for the parents and the school, expenses and transportation, their child’s social development and progress, academics, and view points of other parents and teachers.
Parents have to consider the times of the programs. All day would provide structured care for the whole working day. Half day would need assistance on the parent’s part of personal childcare or paid childcare. Availability of space in schools should be considered. If a school does not have enough money to accommodate the extra kindergarteners, the available space of classrooms will not be there. The classrooms would most likely be over crowded.
Money is always an issue, especially when it comes to schools. All day kindergarten costs $2,340.00 a year, which comes out to nine payments of $260.00 a month (“Welcome,” 2004). All day is expensive because it requires additional teaching staff. All day saves parents and schools money on transportation because the extra trip does not have to be made. Half day cost money for transportation because of the additional trip for the busses and the parents.
All day kindergarten would provide more time for the teacher to get to know the parents and students as well at the children and parents getting to know the teacher. In a half-day program the parents, teachers and students do not have as much time as all day to get to know each other. All day provides a consistent schedule for children and reduces the ratio of transition time (“Investing,” 2002). Students in all day are more likely to approach the teacher than students attending half-day (“Investing,” 2002). All day kindergarten also helps children get used to being away from home and their parents (Rothenberg, 1984). Half-day children can get disrupted in the process of being moved from one program to another, half-day kindergarten classroom to the daycare.
The standards for all day and half day are the same within the state. The difference is the students in all day are allowed more time to work on the standards. Children in all day learn more in reading and math over the kindergarten year (“Investing,” 2002). They receive more independent learning, classroom involvement, and productivity in work with peers and refelctiveness (“Investing,” 2002).
The attitudes of parents and teachers vary. The parents of children who attend all day are in favor of all day because they can work longer and their child is in an educational environment. The parents of children who attend half-day favor half-day because the children spend more family time and it is free. Every situation is different.
All day kindergarten is clearly a better and healthier choice of a program. The money is worth all the education that is provided for the all day kindergarten. It is only one year that is being paid for if the child continues into public school. Parents would be paying for daycare before or after the half-day program anyway so why not pay for an all day structured, learning experience for your child?
Schoolhouse:http://nccsc.k12.in.us/perduec/schoolhouse.jpg
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