Here’s What Kids Really Need to Know Before Kindergarten.
I have a friend who was very serious about preparing for kindergarten. When her son started doing his preschool homework (“homework” and “preschool” are two words that should never be combined) and he couldn’t correctly identify in his homework that the word “car” starts with the letter “ S ”, she got scared. …
“The poor child was practically homeschooled all summer,” she told me later. “I have a bunch of tutorials and we have been working on them. I think we looked at words, added and subtracted, letter sounds and opposites. Almost everything we did in kindergarten. “
Since her son has a September birthday and will be one of the youngest in his class, she was confident that she had to catch up with him where she imagined there would be other children at the beginning of the year. But it turned against her.
“When he went to school, he knew all this,” she told me. “They called me and said that he did his job and then walked around the class and corrected other children.”
Before my son went to kindergarten a few years ago, and I was worried that he still didn’t read at all, her advice to me was simple: take your time. He will learn what he needs to learn in kindergarten.
There is a lot of talk about the fact that preschool is a new kindergarten, and kindergarten is a new first grade, but does this mean that our children should be more educated at this age than we are?
Most experts say no. What they need to get started before kindergarten is more about life skills than whether they know that two plus two equals four.
Marcy Gooddemie, former executive director of the Gesell Institute for Child Development in New Haven, Connecticut, told Today.com that concepts that foster children’s independence need to be introduced – but not necessarily learned – before they go to kindergarten. …
Guddemi insists that different children learn at different rates, and the best thing you can do for your child at this age is to encourage a love of learning. Hint: It’s all about cultivating confidence and independence.
So what should they be able to do before kindergarten?
They should be able to “use” books.
Do children need to learn to read before kindergarten? Absolutely not. But they need to know how books work . They need to know how to hold a book and how to turn pages, and they need to begin to understand that the story is told in words, not just pictures.
You can convey this message by tracing the words with your fingers or by specifying specific words in the story. Reading regularly to children – and giving them the opportunity to see you read – is the best way to ensure they read for life, and this is more important than whether they can speak words at age five.
They need to know a few letters and numbers.
If they recognize most of the letters and can count from 1 to 10, they are on the right track to kindergarten. They don’t need to know what sound each letter makes, but recognizing the letters and knowing that they are grouped together to form words is the first step to being able to read. They should also be able to identify some basic colors and shapes.
They should be able to write their name
By kindergarten, kids should learn how to write their own name using letters in the correct order from left to right and ideally capitalizing at the beginning (no need to panic about the last part though). Their handwriting does not have to be perfect, but clear enough for the teacher to read.
They should have a little independence
By kindergarten, children should be able to mostly dress, use the toilet on their own, pack their backpacks and generally be able to ask for what they need. They should be able to use basic drawing supplies such as crayons, glue sticks, and safety scissors. And they should be able to part with their parents without too much anxiety (which is more difficult for some children at the beginning of the year, but should get easier over time).
They must be able to cooperate
Kindergarten students should be able to share with each other, take turns and be able to (mostly) listen and follow simple directions. Obviously, this will continue to be worked on for some time, but the concept of waiting in line or raising your hand before speaking shouldn’t be new. (I’ve also read some tips on how to teach them to sit still – “practice” playing at school at home – but I don’t know … good luck with that.)
They should know basic personal information.
At five, kids should be able to say their first and last name, and if you can get them to remember their address and phone number, that’s even better. When I picked up my son from preschool one afternoon and he told me he had a task to remember his address by the end of the week, I almost laughed back. Find out his address? How the hell was he going to remember HIS ADDRESS ?? But I began to repeat it to him over and over again in a special melodious voice; to this day, he still repeats it with the same frequency. It’s the same with my cell phone number, which I taught him around the same time, in case he ever separated from me and needed someone’s phone to call me.
So, while kindergarten may be the new first grade in terms of the length of the day and how fast they progress in school throughout the year, there is no need to delay the preparation too much until they are ready.