Preparing Your Preschool-Age Child for Kindergarten

Whether you're a stay-at-home parent, commuting and parenting, or have found the perfect work-life balance, your growing preschooler will be going to kindergarten soon. Are you ready? Is she?

Public schools require that entering kindergarteners reach the age of five by a particular date in order to be eligible. Private and parochial schools often screen their kindergarten applicants on behavior and academic preparedness.

These three criteria - age, behavior, and academics - correlate strongly with children's success in kindergarten.

AGE
In recent years, many parents of boys have kept their kids in preschool for an additional year. The thinking is that boys often mature more slowly, and need the extra year to develop a maturity level appropriate for kindergarten. There is often, therefore, a spread of almost two years in boys' ages in a single grade, whereas girls tend to be within a year of each other in age.

If you do not have specific concerns about your child's behavior, just follow your school's or district's age requirements. If you are concerned about your child's behavior, you might benefit from a talk with a kindergarten teacher about expectations, or a child psychologist about his or her development.

If your child attended preschool part-time, and kindergarten is a longer day, be ready for low energy evenings. Don't force your child to stay awake if she's exhausted. Let her skip a meal and get some sleep. She'll be plenty hungry the next day, and can make up the nutrition. Make sure to have downtime at home, even if your schedule is hectic, to talk about her day if she wants, and let her wind down early.

On the playground, kindergarteners are often kept apart, but smaller kindergarteners may still stand out within their own classes. With some boys two years older than the others, and half a foot taller, parents of big and little students alike should talk to their kids about playing well. Smaller boys in particular may get scared, even if the bigger boys aren't bullying.

BEHAVIOR
Kindergarten used to be where American students learned to share, but preschool has become so common that entering kindergarteners are often assumed to have learned how to be in a group.

Parents should know that this expectation is widespread, and help their children learn appropriate social skills. If your child occasionally grabs a toy or has a conflict, this does not mean he is not ready for kindergarten.

You can, however, make the school experience a more positive one all around by helping your growing student develop positive social skills. These include talking to resolve conflicts, describing how he feels, listening to someone he has hurt, and forgiving others.

Probably the best two instructional techniques for these skills are good modeling and practice. That is the heart of many preschool programs, and you can reinforce (or provide) it at home. Play-dates and siblings provide children who do not go to preschool good opportunities to get ready for sharing in kindergarten.

Making friends is one of the great memories we all have about school. Children as young as two or three can develop lifelong friendships that they choose to maintain. As a parent, you would do well to support this pre-kindergarten skill, even if your child's preschool pals are going to different kindergarten classes, or even different schools. Making friends takes practice. Meeting other parents and inviting them over with their kids helps your child develop those skills, even if he does not develop great friendships yet.

This also is an opportunity to observe your child's social skills. If you see anything that makes you concerned, such as violence or debilitating shyness around other children, talk to other parents for advice, or see a child psychologist. It may be perfectly normal, a passing phase, or something that needs tending to. Better to address this before making the transition to kindergarten, which can be stressful enough for your child.

One of the big determinants of kindergarten readiness is how well a student follows directions. Again, preschool is a great indicator of this, and your child's preschool teachers are a great source of information about this. But your observations at home matter, too.

Does your child hear, understand, and respond appropriately to you? If not, you should make sure you aren't the cause of the problem before trying to change your child. Parents are often frazzled, and say things too quickly, or pile on a lot of information, which tends to overload three and four year olds.

Also, make sure that you are calm and that your child has ample opportunity to respond, and knows what an appropriate response would be. If you think your child is not ready, this is another issue about which you might check with other parents, or try to schedule a meeting with a kindergarten teacher or school counselor.

ACADEMICS
Finally, your child's academic skills are going to need to meet some basic levels for her to succeed in kindergarten.

Can she sound out all of her letters? This is a really basic one, and it's not hard to help children learn this. Reading from books and pointing to the words is enough for many children. And public television morning shows often do an excellent job of showing letter-sound links, while stopping your children in their tracks so you can feed them breakfast! Letter blocks, picture books, and reading aloud are all excellent practices for you to painlessly teach your child this important skill.

Can your child write her name, and recite the alphabet? Saying the letter names in order isn't an important skill by itself, but kindergarten kids rely on the rhyme and sequence all the time to help them with reading tasks. If your child can't write her name, keep practicing. Long-lasting writing problems may indicate a motor skills ("hand-eye coordination") problem. Child and school psychologists have simple tests for this, and fixing it is not much of a problem.

Can your child count at least to ten, and read numbers up to 30? Counting, reading, and writing numbers will be taught, of course, but having the skill going in makes your child much easier to teach, and much happier with himself in class. You probably remember how it felt to be the last to learn something, so help your child by counting trees, pennies, or cars going by. It turns out kids really like doing this.

Anything you can do to make learning - whether it's playground etiquette, listening skills, or academic content - into a game makes it easier for you and your child. Listen to her - I bet she'll tell you something today that helps you get her ready for the big day, the start of kindergarten.