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Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten?
Is Your Child Ready For Kindergarten? by Dr. Kira Wilson, Director, Covenant Academy Five Key Skills To Assess
Kindergarten comes quickly! The first day of Kindergarten is filled with excitement and emotion as we launch our little ones off to start formal schooling. One of the greatest measures of success for the kindergarten year is your child’s academic and socialemotional readiness. Now is a good time to assess areas of strength and areas still being developed in your child. As the parent, you have the privilege to come alongside your child and help build their skills, confidence and security. What a fun and important job. Let’s get started:
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In determining readiness for kindergarten, parents should consider several things: general knowledge, vocabulary, attentiveness and focus, curiosity and desire to learn, and social and physical maturity. While these skills are further developed in kindergarten, a certain level is needed for a successful first year of formal education.
General knowledge General knowledge is gained through read aloud books, exploring, and engaging children in conversation about the world around them. A child ready for kindergarten should know basic colors, shapes, be able to recognize most letters of the alphabet and may know the sounds of several letters. They should also recognize numbers to ten, be able to count to
20, recognize and create patterns, and understand ordinal numbers.
Vocabulary A child’s vocabulary entering kindergarten has been shown to determine academic success. Vocabulary is acquired through read aloud and discussion with an adult. Engaging conversation and learning activities such as cooking, creating art projects, visiting the library, and exploring together will help to increase vocabulary.
Attentiveness and Focus The ability to focus on instruction or a task is important for successful learning in the classroom. Readiness for kindergarten means the child can follow instruction and stick with a task for five to ten minutes. Read aloud activities or project learning are good ways to increase attentiveness.
Curiosity and Desire to Learn A curious mind is easy to teach. Young children are like sponges, soaking up new information minute by minute. Exposing them to a variety of experiences helps their curiosity to grow. Explore the outdoors, involve them in household chores and projects, include them in your hobbies, let them get their hands dirty, create and build, and engage in sports.
Social and Physical Maturity Social and physical maturity is seen in the child’s ability to take turns, share with others, listen, communicate, have command of their body, hold a pencil, write their name, and use scissors. Kindergarten is a place for learning social skills and further developing physical maturity.
This is not an exhaustive list of skills for kindergarten, but it will help you assess and prepare for this important step in your child’s life. It is not expected that these skills be mastered. Some children will know all their letters and sounds — maybe even be reading when they enter kindergarten, while others will have a reasonable grasp of these skills. Both will be successful.
Covenant Academy is currently offering kindergarten screenings on Wednesday, April 29. Registration is $25 and is currently open for a limited number of children. We will provide an individualized assessment of your child’s current readiness skills and how you can best support them. Learn more online at www.covenantacademyfl.org/ academics/elementary or call us at 727-317-5526 to reserve your spot!
Dr. Kira Wilson is the Director of Covenant Academy in Pinellas County. With more than 30 years in Christian education, her passion is to encourage and equip teachers and parents to develop in children a love for learning and a love for God. She cherishes family time with her husband of 38 years, three children, and two grandchildren.
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