Getting Ready for Kindergarten

 Kindergarten today is different in many ways than when you attended school. Many children come to Kindergarten with previous preschool or day care experience. Even though your child won’t begin school until the fall, there are many things you can do now to prepare him/her for kindergarten.

Here are some ideas:

• Make sure your child knows as many alphabet letters as possible, both upper and lower case. Practice them in random order.
• Help your child learn the sound for each of the letters.
• Read with your child on a regular basis. Point out the title, author, front cover, back cover, capital letters.
• Help your child to learn the difference between a letter, a word, and a sentence. Use books, newspapers, and magazines to find letters, words, and sentences. Count the words on a page- the words in the title, etc.
• Be sure your child can write his/her name using a capital letter to start and all lower case for the rest, using a continuous movement.
• Help your child learn his shapes and colors.
• Let your child use scissors and practice cutting both on plain paper and on lines.
• Write to your child. Encourage your child to write back even if what they write is just one letter. Let them try to sound out words themselves. Try not to spell everything for them.
• Please work with your child on self help skills: Help him/her learn to use tissues alone and to practice good hygiene. Work on tying shoes, buckling a belt, buttoning/snapping clothes and zipping a coat.
• Talk about what is more, less, or the same. Use vocabulary such as smaller, larger, longer, shorter, etc.
• Introduce your child to the difference between letters and numbers.
• Help your child learn to recognize numerals at least to 10.