How to Prep Your Future Kindergartener for a School Routine

It's that time of year again when it's time to start preparing for the first day of school! Hard to believe the summer went by so quickly. Here in SC we start school a week from today. Still hard to believe! This year my youngest will begin Kindergarten. I'm very sad that I'll no longer have kids home with me during the day, but I'm also excited for her and the new experiences she's about to have. I know as a parent when my first child went to school last year I was a bit unprepared. I mean I knew he'd be fine and he'd be gone all day, but not having him around all day was hard for me. Of course we all adjusted and a few months after the school year we were all settled, but the beginning was tough.

I'm sure many parents often wonder how you prepare your child for Kindergarten. How do you start a new routine when you are pretty much used to not having one. I mean we all have one somewhat, but it's not as strict as it becomes once your children start school. I'm that mom that thought that preschool wasn't necessary. I thought if I was home all day why should I pay someone else to watch/teach my children. Then I realized that my son had not been away from me since he was born. Sure my kids had a sitter here and there, but he'd never spent day after day away from me. I was concerned so the first thing I did was enroll him into preschool. He went from 9-12 Monday through Friday. Now that's not quite what Kindergarten was going to be like, but at least he'd get into a bit of a routine and hopefully make the adjustment a bit easier for him. I also did the same thing for my daughter who will be going to Kindergarten this fall. One thing I didn't do with my son that I did with my daughter to help her prepare for Kindergarten was one day each week she's stay at preschool until two. School is from 8-2:30 and she was only going from 9-12 so I wanted to better prepare her. She did just fine with it.

I think it helps also if you have older children and involve the younger children as much as you can. My daughter would go with me to have lunch with my son. She'd go with me anytime I went to the school for any reason to see my son. She got to get a feel for the school and see some of the things he was doing as a Kindergartener. She will also have the same teacher that he had so that will help tremendously in my opinion. She'll know what to expect somewhat from what she saw him do.

Now that we are only a week or so away from school it's hard to start preparing a child for Kindergarten if you haven't yet begun to do so. We have started early bedtimes and early wake up times. My daughter was used to getting up at 8:15 when she went to preschool, but we're gonna to be leaving the house by 7:30 so she's been getting up earlier to prepare for that. If you know what time your child might eat lunch at school you can try to adjust your schedule around that. My daughter will eat lunch at 10:30. I know that is crazy, but it seemed to work out okay last year. That is a bit early for the rest of us to have lunch so we don't eat quite that early, but I try to aim for around that time. I also try to get her outside for a certain amount of time and make her stay out as long as a recess might be. We have a rest time or quiet time in the afternoons because I know she'll have rest time at school the first part of the school year. My kids are big snackers so I've been trying to limit snacks, knowing that she won't get a snack anytime she wants while in school.

Other than what I've listed above I'm sure how else you'd get your child into a routine to prepare them for Kindergarten. I'm sure there are a lot of ideas out there, but the best way for us was to just pretend like we're already in school mode. I guess the real test will come next week when she actually starts school!