Rob Hill
The Kindergarten Entrance Exam
Do not turn to the next page until you are instructed to do so by the test proctor.
The pressure was on my daughter Emalee, but I was the one who felt it. Nearly five years old, she was being “screened” for entry into the fall kindergarten class. Not knowing what to expect, I sharpened up a bunch of Number Two Crayola crayons, and I made sure she got plenty of carbohydrates for breakfast that morning.
In preparation for the kindergarten SATs, Emalee and I had worked on some geometry, and once she had made it clear that she was not terribly interested in the Pythagorean Theorem, we moved on to analogies to improve her score on the verbal section of the test.
"Emalee, hand is to glove as foot is to what?"
"Can I watch a movie, Dad?"
It’s very difficult to get preschoolers these days to focus on the things that are truly important, like test scores and being intellectually superior to their classmates. I tried to explain to Emalee that this indifference to her studies could come back and haunt her someday when she’s applying for college scholarships. Scoffing at me, she pointed out that if I would just forego the dependent tax exemption during her final year of high school, she could qualify for federal financial aid. Plus, she said, if I had any brains at all I would be taking advantage of new IRS rules for Education IRAs, and that if I don’t capitalize on the opportunity to earn compound interest in a tax-free investment vehicle like that, it will be my own fault if there’s not enough money to send her to college.
Then she popped in the Porky Pig video. The kid is very disrespectful, I tell you.
On the big day, Emalee and I set out to cross the street to the school where she would begin Kindergarten next year. I attempted to hold her hand when we crossed the street as I usually do, but on this occasion she refused, complaining that my hand was “too sweaty.” When we entered the testing room, we found that there were three testing “stations” testing three areas of development - gross motor skills, language and concept comprehension. Now my hands were really sweaty.
The Gross Motor Skills testing was first and began with the tester throwing Emalee a bean bag and her attempting to catch it. Immediately I stepped in and objected to this because Emalee and I had not worked on catching. I was too busy trying to teach her about the hypotenuse of a triangle. The testers had to call security to have me restrained. I think that shook Emalee up a bit because she missed two of the four bean bag tosses. I tried to shout at the tester that her throws sucked and that Johnny Bench couldn’t have caught them with a fishing net, but the security people gagged me with a Nerf ball.
After acing the language section of the test by reciting her name and phone number and giving the tester precise directions to Safeco Field without being asked, it was time for Emalee to be tested on her understanding of concepts. This was worrisome to me because it seems that Emalee has difficulty with concepts such as “Be quiet for one minute” and “Stop pulling your father’s hair.” Fortunately, those concepts were not on the test. Otherwise Emalee might have had to stay in preschool until she’s nine.
Instead, the concepts testing focused on her ability to categorize items by size and shape and her ability to understand relative terms such as bigger and smaller. For example, she was shown three triangles and asked which was biggest. She pointed to the biggest one. When asked how she knew that one was the biggest triangle, she said it was “because it has the biggest hypotenuse, silly.” I knew my hard work would pay off somehow.
When all was said and done, Emalee had a composite score in the top ten percent of kids her age. If she’d caught one more beanbag, she would have placed in the top five percent, so we’ll have to work on that this summer. But I’m proud to say that my daughter has now been accepted as a kindergarten student in the public school. On a full scholarship to boot.
Rob Hill is a syndicated columnist appearing first in the Tacoma City Paper. Send e-mail to Haf2Laugh@aol.com.
"The Kindergarten Entrance Exam" was published in Maelstrom, Vol. II, Issue 5.