Is your child ready for kindergarten?
Parents often wonder if their children’s academic skills make them ready for kindergarten. However, a child is only seen ready for kindergarten if the child has not only academic skills but emotional and social skills as well.
The skills your child needs to have for him/her to be seen as ready for kindergarten include:
Gross Motor Skills
- Catch and bounce a ball
- Hop on one foot
- Run
- Feet together when jumping
- Climb stairs
Self-care Skills
- Knows his/her age, last and first name
- Wash up on their own
- Use the bathroom
- Can dress on their own with some assistance with shoelaces, buttons, and zippers
Fine Motor Skills
- Knows how to put together a simple puzzle
- Write some actual letters that are in their name
- Some control with using a crayon or pencil
- Copy basic shapes
- Some control in using scissors
Math Skills
- Point or name the colours in a standard box of 8 crayons
- Name and recognise basic shapes such as rectangle, square, triangle, and circle
- Able to count without skipping numbers 1-10
- Able to arrange objects from smallest to biggest or vice-versa
- Understand less than and more than
- Match a number to a picture
Emotional and social skills
- Able to withstand being separated from a parent
- Show at least an attention span for 5 minutes to instructions from an adult
- Able to communicate with other children
Language Skills
- Describe and compare relationships between objects such as over/under, last/first, little/big
- Can express the right words for his/her wants and needs
- Speak using complete sentences that can be understood most of the time by other people
- Understand two-step directions
Reading Skills
- Identify or be able to recite the letters of the alphabet
- Likes to hear stories
- Express an idea by drawing a picture
- Know the right way of flipping the pages of a book
- Recognise the first page of the book
- Recognise their name
- Try to write their name
- Have an idea about the connection of sounds to letters
- Recognise familiar signs and logos such as a go or stop sign
Helping your child attend Kindergarten
Children develop their skills at varying rates. Your kid may show some weak skills in some areas while having strong skills in other areas. A kindergarten readiness test is often used by some states or localities for parents to get a sense of their children’s readiness for kindergarten.
It is recommended for parents to talk with the preschool teacher of their children to find their readiness. Going this route enables both teachers and parents to come up with a plan to resolve any trouble spots.
Growth and learning are exciting experiences with kindergarten. This makes it imperative for parents to invest in pre-school learning to make their children ready for kindergarten.
The list of kindergarten requirements seems a big hurdle for both parents and children. However, parents supporting their children by teaching them some of the required skills are the best way to get them admitted to kindergarten.
The pre-school teacher of the child can significantly help in developing the skills required of a child before getting admitted to kindergarten. We are here to help. Check out the new child care centre in Manly.