Kindergarten

School Readiness

What is school readiness?

School readiness involves more than just children.
School
readiness , in the broadest sense, is about
children, families,
early environments, schools, and communities. Children are not
innately ready or not ready for school. Their skills and
development are strongly influenced by their families and
through their
interactions with other people and
environments before coming to school.
(Maxwell & Clifford 2004, 42)

How is the student ready?

A kindergarten-ready child has a strong
foundation in Language & Literacy, Thinking
Skills, Self-Control, and Self-Confidence.

A childs attainment of certain set of

emotional, behavioral, and cognitive skills
needed to learn, work, and function
successfully in school are also helpful.

Language & Literacy: When babies hear words, they learn

about language. A growing vocabulary strengthens a childs
readiness for reading.
Thinking Skills: Children are natural scientists. Their first
experiments teach them about the world and help them get
ready for math and science.
Self-Control: A child who is socialized to solve problems
through words, take turns, and pay attention is ready to be a
good classroom citizen.
Self-Confidence: Confident children are ready to learn. They
follow their curiosity and are quick to recover from mistakes.

Family environment is very important in shaping

childrens early development. Some family factors
that can influence readiness include:

3) Enriched Home Environment: Children from homes

where parents talk with their children, engage them in
conversation , read to them, and engage in forms of
discipline such as time-out that encourage selfdiscipline have stronger readiness skills.

What Can Parents do?

1.
2.
3.

Read books to and with your child.

Spend time with your child, including playing, cuddling, and hugging.
Create and enforce a routine within your home that your child needs to follow
(times of meals, naptimes, bedtimes, etc.).
4. Take time to talk to your child.
5. Encourage and answer questions from your child.
6. Engage in informal reading and counting activities at home.
7. Familiarize children with the alphabet and with numbers.
8. Promote your childs cognitive development by showing and encouraging your
child to think about the world around them.
9. Promote play that helps develop literacy skills, problem-solving skills, creativity,
and imagination.
10. Ensure opportunity to develop social skills through playgrounds or more formal
preschool activities.
11. Encourage behaviors that demonstrate respect and courtesy.
12. Encourage children to accept responsibility and build competence through simple
chores, such as putting toys away and picking up clothes.

Kindergarten Readiness Checklist

Listen to stories without interrupting

Recognize rhyming sounds

Understand actions have

Pay attention for short periods of
both causes and effects
time to adult-directed tasks
Show understanding of
Count to ten Identify rhyming words
general times of day
Trace basic shapes
Cut with scissors
Begin to share with others Start to follow rules

Bounce a ball

Be able to
Begin to control
recognize authority
oneself
Identify some
alphabet letters Separate from parents Manage bathroom needs
without being upset
Button shirts, pants,
Look at pictures and
coats, and zip up zippers
then tell stories Identify the beginning
Sort similar
sound of some words
Talk in complete
objects by color,
sentences of five
Recognize some common
size, and shape
to six words
sight words like "stop"

Speak understandably

Recognize groups of one, two, three, four, and five objects

http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-03/parenting/guide?gclid=CIWx9PHpgcECFSMLMgodkBUA5A
http://www.nasponline.org/resources/handouts/schoolreadiness.
pdf
https://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/Readiness.pdf
http://school.familyeducation.com/kindergarten/schoolreadiness/38491.html