Strategies to Prepare Your Child for Kindergarten

EDUCATION UPDATE

Fun, Free, and Simple Strategies to Prepare Your Child for Kindergarten

JAKE DOWNS, PHD Elementary Literacy Coordinator, Cache County School District

The signs are around town — you’ve seen them — “Register your child for kindergarten!” You may be wondering how you can prepare your child for their first year of school. This article will provide three simple steps that will work for preparing a future kindergartner.

SIMPLE STRATEGY #1: PLAY WITH SOUNDS We often think of learning the alphabet as the entry-gate to reading. However, the ability to recognize and manipulate sounds within spoken words is critical for our young readers. This is a skill that can be easily supported at home with no special materials or experience. Below are a few examples of sound ‘games’ you can play with your preschooler: • Sound "I Spy": This is the same as the classic game, except you are "spying" sounds instead of objects. For example: "I spy something that rhymes with hook… (book)." • Clap or Tap the Syllables: Throughout the day, show your preschooler how to clap or tap the syllables of everyday objects.

For example, at dinner, you could ask your preschooler to pass the chi•ken or the wa•ter. • Silly Swaps: Throughout your day, take a simple word and change one of the sounds to make a new word. For example: “Time for lunch! If I change the /l/ to /b/ the word becomes ‘bunch.’ Do you want a bunch of lunch?” or “Goodnight, please give me a hug. If I change the /h/ to /b/ it becomes

‘bug’. Ew! I don’t want your bug!”

The purpose of these games is to build your preschooler’s awareness of sounds in the words we speak. This skill is called phonemic awareness and it becomes incredibly important once your child starts cementing sounds to letters and blending letter sounds to make whole words. Supporting this skill at home is an excellent way to help your young reader. SIMPLE STRATEGY #2: STRETCH YOUR SENTENCES Stretching sentences with your preschooler is easy and straightforward. When you hear your preschooler talk, repeat it back, but add in one or two words. For example: If your preschooler says, "I want to play hide and seek," you can respond with "Let’s play hide and seek together as a family." If your preschooler says “Look, I drew a picture of Big Blue," you can respond with "That’s a beautiful drawing of Big Blue, the Aggie mascot."

Stretching sentences is like tennis, your child "serves" a sentence and you "return" it, but with added sophistication. Developing this serveand-return habit is a great way to support your child’s oral language as they prepare to enter kindergarten in the fall.

SIMPLE STRATEGY #3: THE NEED TO READ Decades of research support the simple practice of shared story reading. Don’t let the silly characters and colorful pages fool you — the language in many children’s books is more sophisticated than most conversations between adults! Even as little as 10-20 minutes a day of shared storybook reading has been shown to support a preschooler's vocabulary and comprehension development. Here are a few tips to enhance your reading time: • Ask who, what, how, and why questions. (This is also a great time to practice sentence stretching!) • Play the sound games recommended in

Strategy #1. • Define unfamiliar words and then share two or three words that are similar. • Use sentence stems like “It seems to me …” or “From what I can tell …” to help your reader understand the text better. • A regular habit of reading aloud is an excellent method to support your child’s development and prepare them for kindergarten.

Starting kindergarten is an important milestone for young children. These simple strategies will go a long way to help prepare your student for school.