How to Prepare my Child for Kindergarten
The day has finally come and you get an email from your local school district that open enrollment for Kindergarten is at the end of the month. Open enrollment? How could this be? The year has barely just begun and I have to think about my child starting school in August? These were exactly my thoughts earlier this month as I had to grapple with the reality of my 4 year old starting school later this year.
For some of us, it seems like it was just yesterday that your child was just in pull-ups and now you’re being asked to enroll them in school. For others, you may be elated to finally get your self-taught 4 year old reader into a classroom. Wherever you fall on the scale, we’re all faced with the same realities of getting our kids prepared to start school at some point, whether that is this fall or another year from now. Not to mention, we also need to evaluate a few practical matters, such as your state’s policies for school entry, type of schooling you want to enroll your child in (public, private, charter, online, co-op, etc.) and each school’s entry requirements.
Alas, we have this handy guide to help you navigate some key readiness points for your child as you transition from being a Pre-K parent to an elementary parent.
Social-emotional Growth
Your child’s social-emotional development is key at determining their readiness for Kindergarten. Clinical psychologist and certified school psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Matheis, says, “by the time a child is ready to begin kindergarten, he should be able to express his feelings in words as opposed to yelling, grabbing, crying, or throwing himself on the ground." Parents need to dig deep as they look at their child’s behavior socially and emotionally, both at home and at preschool or playdates. Some questions to consider when evaluating social-emotional growth:
Can your child easily separate from you?
Can they clean up after themselves?
Do they follow directions?
Are they able to acknowledge their feelings?
Can they listen to a story without interrupting?
Can they focus on play or an activity by themselves for 10 minutes?
If these questions make you feel overwhelmed, not to worry. There are great practical ways you can implement social and emotional growth at home with everyday life.
Teaching your child responsibility can look like putting your child in charge of small tasks at home, like putting their socks in the laundry basket or helping to set the dinner table. It’s also important that as you give them small tasks, you incorporate ways they can help themselves. For example, have them get in the routine of wiping their own faces after a meal to practice self-care and cleanliness. As they get in the habit of doing these small tasks you can also create daily routines to help them transition into a more structured schedule, just like they would have if they were to go to school. Having your child pick out their clothes the night before so they can dress themselves independently before breakfast in the mornings is a great place to start. This way they know exactly what to expect as they wake up and start their day.
Reading to a wiggly child can be a challenging task, not to mention, if they don’t seem to care. However, we encourage you to push through and keep reading! Reading does not always need to be sitting down with a story book in hand. Take your child to the library to explore different varieties of books and pictures. Read labels on your child’s toys or cereal boxes over breakfast. Pinpoint things from books that would interest your child and read one or two lines. Start small and make sure to implement reading as a daily habit so your child can start to develop the skill of listening attentively. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to encourage your child and be aware of their feelings and emotions when they’re learning new skills. Giving them praise and making things light and fun will create a safe space for them to continue exploring their new skills.
Motor Skills & Cognitive Readiness
You’ve gotten your child past some of their most pivotal developmental milestones since infancy: learning how to walk, how to feed themselves, use the restroom, put on their clothes, recite their name and birthday. Now what? What does my child need to know before school?
Scholastic suggests there is a list of readiness skills (motor & cognitive) that Kindergarten-ready children should have:
Grip a pencil, crayon or marker correctly
Bounce a ball
Use scissors, glue, paint with relative ease
Get dressed
Manage restroom needs
Speak using full sentences
Count from 1-10
Recognize some letters of the alphabet
Classify objects by their size, shape, quantity
Identify rhyming words
Just like social-emotional skills, fine and gross motor skills and cognitive development can be learned and practiced at home with everyday experiences. Regular chores, such as sorting the laundry is a great way to help children identify different colors, types of clothing, and who things belong to. Another way to implement learning is through daily play at home. If you send your child to preschool, you will see that teachers hone in on learning through play and classroom routines. Much of preschool songs incorporate learning basic body parts, shapes, colors, numbers and everyday movements like clapping, jumping, sitting still, and folding hands. These are all fun things that can also be incorporated at home with your family. If you’d like to read more, click here for a printable PDF of ideas to develop these skills and more at home with your child.
Just remember that every child is different. You may have an academic star who can recite his alphabet forwards and backwards while doing basic math, but he struggles to sit still and gets easily distracted. Or you have a daughter who can sit for an hour doing endless crafts at home, but struggles with recognizing lowercase letters. In either case, children learn and grow at their own pace and they don’t have to be perfect or check off all the bullet points to be ready for school. The great thing with Kindergarten is that teachers are trained to meet students at their individual level. As parents, our part is to do what we can to prepare our kids and support them as they embark on their journey with school. And for each family, that will likely look different, and that’s ok. You’ve got this!
Looking for options? Check out our Kindergarten program at PCPA here.
Sources:
https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/kindergarten-here-we-come
