How to Prepare Your Preschooler for Kindergarten
When preparing a child for kindergarten we tend to think of the academics, like letter recognition and counting. However, kindergarten readiness is about the whole child—independence, social stability, emotional stability, and academics. For example, Sarah may love books and be an exceptional reader, but she’s shy so it’s hard for her to engage with new people. Tommy is very strong socially, but hasn’t quite learned how to hold his pencil yet. Callie is a social butterfly and can hold her pencil, but is very wiggly and gets distracted easily.
So, it’s our job to guide our preschooler to learn skills that will help them to have a successful kindergarten year. This could be academic, self-care, independence, emotional skills.
Here are some helpful ways to prepare your preschooler for kindergarten:
Help them develop independence at home. Encourage your preschooler to pick out their clothes and dress themselves in the morning, use the bathroom without help, clear their own dishes from the table, open their own snacks, and even fix their own plate.
Focus on self-care skills. Teach your child to wipe their face and hands after a meal and blow their nose unassisted. But be sure they know it is ok to ask an adult for help when needed.
Teach responsibility. Start letting your child have small responsibilities, like filling up their own water bottle or putting his coat away or chores. Even though it may be easier for you to do these things, it’s good for them to learn responsibility.
Set routines. Set up a morning routine of getting up, getting ready and eating breakfast each day. This will make the transition to starting school a little easier.
Read! Read! Read! This is so important. Read a variety of books. Reading will help your preschooler develop a love of reading, allow them to be exposed to so many new and enlightening things, teach them foundations of reading, and create a great bond for you and your child.
Engage in meaningful activities. Introducing fun and educational activities to your preschooler will help get them familiar to the organization of a classroom. This does not mean you need to create a full day of activities for your child, it simply means engaging in one or two 10-20 minute activities a day. What kind of activities do you need to do? See below!
Acknowledge their emotions. Discuss the new adventure of school with your preschooler. They may be nervous, excited, or even uninterested. Take time to answer their questions and appreciate their feelings.
What Activities Can I Do with My Preschooler to prepare for Kindergarten?
Instead of you having to spend endless hours on the internet searching for activities to help prepare your preschooler for kindergarten, I wanted to help you save your time and sanity by creating a complete resource guide that will be sure to prepare your child for kindergarten. It’s called The Ultimate Kindergarten Prep Guide. I understand the pressures you feel to make sure your preschooler is prepared for kindergarten, but it doesn’t have to be all worksheets all the time. You can prepare your preschooler in an engaging and fun way with the activities from The Ultimate Kindergarten Prep Guide (it might be so fun that they don’t even realize they are learning!).
There are 170+ activities!
These educational activities take 10-20 minutes a day to help your child foster a love of learning.
There are 114 low-prep activities because I know many of us are very busy, so you will only need 1-2 minutes of prep time.
The book is divided into 5 subject areas: Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Life Skills. Your child will have the privilege of learning everything from:
Counting
Beginning Addition and Subtraction
Measuring
Foundations of Reading
Retelling Stories
Writing Practice
Earth and Space
Living and Nonliving
Parts of Plants
Days of the Week
Map Skills
Economics
Blow Nose
Parents’ Phone Numbers
Civilities
Being a former schoolteacher, I took the time to research kindergarten state standards to make sure the activities in The Ultimate Kindergarten Prep Guide would help your child to be fully prepared in all subject areas when entering kindergarten. Even though I used these standards as a guideline, my main goal in creating these activities was to make the learning experience fun for you and your child!
These activities are kid-tested! My oldest son and I had the joy of doing all of these activities together before he started kindergarten, and I am delighted to start these activities with my 4 year old now.
The book also includes 88 handouts that correlate with specific activities.
What questions can I help answer about helping prepare your preschooler for kindergarten or The Ultimate Kindergarten Prep Guide? Please email me to ask and I’ll be happy to help.