Kindergartners are generally 5 or 6 years old, and children this young have short attention spans. It can be very challenging for kindergartners to focus on learning for an entire day. Half-day kindergarten helps children adjust to a structured classroom environment without feeling stressed. In full-day programs, students may struggle to focus on the assigned tasks and may feel a sense of failure. After an entire year of half-day kindergarten, students should be able to focus better and will be able to make the adjustment to full-day first grade more easily.
Some kindergartners still require an afternoon nap to get through the day without becoming overtired and throwing a temper tantrum. Full-day kindergarten may offer rest periods, but in a classroom full of other children students may not have the peace and quiet to get sufficient rest. Half-day kindergarten affords children more down time. If children are tired, they will have a hard time paying attention for a full day of school and may struggle to work well with other children, which will damage their social skills.
The biggest drawback to half-day kindergarten is that students simply spend fewer hours in the classroom, and therefore fewer hours learning. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a study done in the 1998-1999 school year found that full-day kindergarten classes spent more time working on math, social studies and science than half-day classes did. The study also found that only 37 percent of half-day classes spent an hour or more a day on reading, as opposed to 68 percent of full-day classes. According to this study, students in half-day programs learned less than those enrolled in full-day programs.
Playing and working with other children is one of the most important lessons kindergartners should learn, so spending less time with their classmates may prevent students from learning these skills. Many children in half-day classrooms go to after-school programs while their parents work, which may give them just as much social interaction as students in full-day programs. However, students who go home immediately after kindergarten may be more isolated from their peers. These students may struggle to form friendships with others once they reach first grade.