Vintage Kindergarten

[letisca]

Published just over 50 years ago, We Like Kindergarten is a simple children's picture book that follows one little girl named Carol through her day at Kindergarten. With lovely illustrations by Eloise Wilkin (I have friends whose children look like E. Wilkins illustrations) and simple prose in Carol's own voice by Clara Cassidy, the book is a quick and pleasant read with interested children.

But then it occurred to me, just what is Carol doing all day in Kindergarten? The following is the list of activities depicted by the book.

• Carol and her clasmates hang up their coats after their arrival at school.
• Upon entering the classroom, the children's teacher (Miss Hall) plays the piano and the children sing.
• During this opening greeting and singing time, one child is assigned to feed the class fish and one child is assigned to feed the class turtles. They do this job without assistance from the teacher. Every child will do this job in turns.
• Fingerpainting.
• Making animals out of clay. Different children are pictured making different animals.
• Playing Farmer in the Dell (or other similar games)
• Playing music. Children are shown with a number of percussion instruments and a few recorders. One child covers his ears.
• Listening and sitting quietly while Miss Hall tells them a story (the picture shows Miss Hall reading a picture book to the class)
• Show and Tell time. One child has brought his pet hamster. One child tells about his new baby sister.
• Outside Time. Some children run possibly playing tag, others swing on swings.
• Snack time with milk. One child spills his cup of milk but is shown with a rag, wiping it up all by himself.
• Rest time on rugs. Some children are asleep, others are sitting or lying down but awake.
• Dancing time.
• Drawing Pictures. Each picture is shown with the chlld's name signed in all capital letters at the bottom.
• Saying Goodbye to the Teacher and then returning home (Carol is shown walking by herself to and from school)

From the illustration there appear to be about 13 children in Carol's class. Because there is no mention of lunch, this is most likely a half day Kindergarten. So if we imagine that the activities listed above took place in the space of three hours, we can begin to imagine a schedule. There are 14 activity intervals in that time, but I'll round down to 12, which leaves us at about 4 activities per hour. That means that most activities lasted less than 20 minutes, and likely each activity was around 10-15 minutes long.

So that would look like 45 minutes of art time (painting, modeling with clay, drawing) and another 45 minutes of music time (singing, playing games while singing, using musical instruments, dancing). From the illustrations we might figure that about half the time (1.5 hours) the children were doing activities while seated (artwork, story time, snacktime, rest time, etc) while the rest of the time most of the children are shown doing more active things (running, dancing, playing games, etc.). The illustrations even show that during some of the sitting times (art, story time, show and tell) some children are standing but are still fully engaged in this activity.

So, how does this compare with Kindergarten today? And what has changed?