Preparing Your Child for Kindergarten
Social/Emotional Development:
- Play board games to practice taking turns
- Encourage your child to persist in tasks when encountering a problem by giving him/her tasks that are just above their current ability. When your child cannot find a solution on their own, encourage them to calmly ask for help.
- Set up several play dates with friends of varying ages.
- Tell your child you expect him/her to clean up after play.
Language Development:
- Verbally give your child specific one-step and two-step directions and encourage him/her to follow through.
- Read to your child for a combined total of at least 20 minutes a day. THIS IS HUGE AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL!!!!
- While reading, point out how to hold a book (right-side up with the spine on the left) and the orientation in which we read the words and look at the pictures (left to right)
- After reading, ask your child what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
- Give your child plenty of opportunities to draw.
- Teach your child the uppercase and lowercase letters and sounds each letter makes. A great way to do this is through games. Find a great resource here.
Cognitive Development:
- Sort items (blocks, toys, cereal, laundry) by color, shape, and size
- Teach your child to make various patterns (red, blue, red, blue)
- Practice counting aloud to 20 (doing this while driving in the car is a great time to practice
- Teach your child numerals 1-10. Find another great resource to do this here.
- Count objects around your home. Have your child point to each object as he/she counts.
- Go on shape hunts! Look for circles, triangles, squares and rectangles!
- Talk about positional and directional concepts like up/down, over/under, in/out, behind, in front of, top/bottom, beside/between, off/on, stop/go
- Talk about opposite words like big/little, empty/full, slow/fast
Physical Development:
- Let your child use child-safe scissors to cut out a variety of shapes
- Teach your child to write his/her name with a capital for the first letter and lowercase for the remaining letters. When first doing this, start by writing your child's name with a highlighter and encourage them to trace over it. Be sure he/she forms letters top to bottom.
- Ensure your child is holding their pencil correctly (this is so important!) Look here for help.
**This list is adapted from the "I can teach my child" Kindergarten Readiness Checklist.
