If your child is coming up to kindergarten age, there are several things you can do to prepare your little one for this big adjustment. Here are 10 readiness skills you can work on with your child.
- Writing
Quality kindergartens near me from Guardian advise that you can help your child with his or her writing skills by:
- Practicing writing letters, particularly his or her name
- Teach your child to write an uppercase first letter for their name
- Have fun writing with sugar, salt, and even shaving cream and finger paint
- Recognizing Letters
- Use fridge magnets to play hide and seek
- Play games to help your little one recognize letters
- Beginning Sounds
- Teach your child the sound that each letter makes
- Find things around the house that start with the same sound and get your child to find the corresponding letter
- Counting and Numbers
- Count around your child all day long! For instance, if she is playing with dolls, count the dolls
- Point out numbers around you and have your child name them, like numbers on street signs
- Colours and Shapes
- If your little one is struggling to recognize certain colours, you could try adding a little food colouring to milk, vanilla pudding, and cookie dough to emphasise the colours
- Teach your child more difficult shapes like rectangles by teaching him or her how to draw them and then cut them out
- Play games to find objects of certain shapes and colours around the house
- Fine Motor Skills
- Have fun playing with play dough to help strengthen the muscles in your little one’s hands
- Offer a few different writing options, like markers, crayons, and pencils, to harbour interest in drawing and writing
- Cutting
- Cutting play dough is a great way to practice this skill
- Buy a pair of child-safe scissors and allow your child to practice cutting
- Give him or her old newspapers and magazines to cut up and make collages with
- Reading Readiness
- Play fun games with rhyming words to help your little boy or girl hear similar sounds in words
- Run your finger around words as you read them out to your child to help them learn that words go top to bottom and left to right
- Following Directions and Attention Span
- Play Simon Says with two-step directions
- Read plenty of stories to work up to reading longer chapters
- Social Skills
- Give your kindergartener the chance to interact with other kids wherever you go, like play dates, social groups, and church
- Teach him or her how to express feelings when they don’t like something
- Try role-play in different situations he or she is likely to come across on the playground.
You’re probably already practicing a lot of the skills your child is going to need for kindergarten. Keep things fun and easy-going and he or she will be ready for their first taste of school in no time!