Kindergarten readiness involves several aspects. It is important that your child is academically ready for kindergarten. However, it is equally important that they are emotionally, physically, and mentally ready as well. If your child is going to suffer from separation anxiety, or doesn’t have the hand coordination to write, etc. then kindergarten will be a real trial for them. Taking the steps early to ensure your child is kindergarten ready is important.
Here are a few of the things your child should be capable of in order for them to be kindergarten ready. First, they should have a basic understanding of how books work, what side is right side up, etc. They should be able to identify the sounds of words, and identify letters, their upper and lower case, etc. A kindergarten ready child should be able to identify some of the most common sight words like “and” or “the”. Another skill most kindergarten ready kids should have is the ability to rhyme words, and recognize when things rhyme. They should be able to recognize that hat and cat sound the same. This will help them learn to read faster. In order for kindergarteners to do any kind of math, they need to come to school kindergarten ready with numbers. This means they should be able to count to ten, understand the basics of what numbers are, and recognize when something is bigger or more than something else.
A kindergarten ready child should be able to do certain things to take care of themselves. For example, they should be able to get themselves dressed for school in the morning. They should be able to manage their bathroom needs by themselves, all the way from getting to the bathroom on time, to buttoning their pants, and washing their hands after. A child ready for kindergarten should be able to zip and button their clothes.
Kindergarten ready children need to have a certain level of maturity and an existing attention span to be successful in school. They have to know that a teacher is an authority figure, and that when they set rules, they need to be followed. They need to be able to leave their parents with out getting upset, and interact with other kids, sharing, and being nice. In other words, they have to have some self-control.
In addition to self-control, kindergarten age kids should be able to recognize what time of the day it is. They need to be decent communicators, be able to speak in sentences with five or six words or more, be understandable when they speak, and communicate needs and wants without whining.
You can help your child get kindergarten ready by helping them practice skills like cutting with scissors. You can draw shapes on a paper and let your child practice cutting by having them cut them out. You can kill two birds with one stone by having them trace the shapes before you cut them out.