Kindergarten Readiness

Your child may have already begun to practice or may have mastered some of the following skill sets associated with kindergarten:

Skills of Independence:

• Button shirts, pants, coats independently
• Use the restroom alone
• Clean up after eating

Learning Behaviors:

• Follow directions first time
• Take turns and share
• Ask and answer questions
• Take turns to speak

Academic:

• Recognize and write their first name
• Say and recognize all letters of the alphabet
• Count to 20
• Count 20 objects
• Hold a pencil correctly
• Hold and cut with scissors correctly

The above skills are a sampling of those that children need in order to function independently. Children also need to learn social skills, to solve problems, and to make good choices for themselves and others. Considerable learning takes place before school begins. The experiences below are some that parents can provide children that will enable them to make an easier transition from home to school:

• Provide opportunities to make friends with other children. It may help to leave your child at a friend's home for an occasional morning or afternoon. This also provides practice at sharing and taking turns.
• Encourage activities in which your child is successful and feels good. Self-esteem is important. Use setbacks as opportunities to teach your child how to deal with disappointment and emphasize that practice leads to improvement.
• Read to your child frequently. Encourage your child to express ideas through drawings, dramatics, or other activities that require the use of the hands. Encourage your child to share experiences and stories.
• Give responsibilities such as the following:
  • Putting toys away and hanging up clothing
  • Doing small jobs such as helping set the table, putting away books, etc.
  • Going to the bathroom alone
  • Dressing self, tying shoelaces

Pre-Reading Readiness Activities

“Reading aloud to your children is the single most important activity in building reading success and enjoyment.”

• Teach your child nursery rhymes and songs.
• Read daily to your child (15+ minutes).
• Before beginning to read, read the title and author of the story. Make predictions: “What do you think this story is going to be about?” Talk about the story: “This looks like it is going to be a funny story. Why do you think so?”
• Let your child hold the book and turn the pages.
• As the story becomes familiar, encourage your child to join in and read too.
• Help your child to tell the story from the pictures in the book.
• After reading the story, have your child retell the story. Guide your child to start at the beginning and progress through the events in the story.
• After the reading, leave the book in a prominent place so it can be read again independently by your child.
• Make sure your child sees all members of the family reading.
• Encourage your child to choose the books you read together and help him/her to tell or retell the story from the pictures in the book.
• Select books that describe familiar experiences, concepts and objects, as well as fairy tales and fantasy stories. Books that use repetition capture the rhythm of language (The Three Billy Goats Gruff).
• Talk about the books as you read – the people, things, and animals in them.
• Draw attention to the illustrations when reading.
• Purchase books as gifts. Let your child help you choose them. School book orders are an inexpensive source for new books.
• Put magnetic letters on the refrigerator (lowercase and capitals). Have your child spell their name and other familiar words. You can write words on post-it notes and have your child copy the word with the magnetic letters.
• Read alphabet books. Help your child make his own by cutting out and pasting magazine pictures on individual pages.
• Create a writing basket. Have plenty of markers, crayons, pens, paper, and other materials on hand to encourage your child to make books, write and draw.
• Keep favorite audio stories and songs in the car to play. Use books and writing paper at home when your child needs something to do.
• Encourage your child to write about what they have drawn. At this stage your child will be spelling phonetically. It may look like nothing more than random letters, but this is how children connect sounds to letters.
• Visit the library with your child weekly. Let your child have their own library card. Make it a habit to visit the local bookstore. Many stores carry used books.
• Talk about everyday print. “We are going shopping. Look at the grocery store sign.” Ask, “What does the sign say?” (Fred Meyer, Safeway, Zupans, etc.). Have your child say the names of the letters in the sign.
• Fill your child’s room with posters, books, and pictures of book characters.
• Get a cloth book bag. Take books with you wherever you go.
• Make books and reading to your child a relaxed, fun activity. Keep the interaction short and geared to your child’s interests.
• Add reading readiness games to your tablet for occasional use.

Suggestions for reading with your child(ren):

Pre-Writing Skills

The mastery of handwriting requires development of pre-writing skills. Addressing these skills through activities, play, and instruction will help build a strong foundation for handwriting. Pre-writing skills needed for handwriting include:

• An established hand dominance for coloring, drawing, or using a fork.
• The ability to cross the midline of the body.
• A functional pencil grasp.
• An understanding of directional terms and the ability to recognize similarities and differences in forms.
• The ability to copy basic lines and shapes.
• The ability to use two hands in an activity.
• The ability to coordinate eyes and hands together.
• The ability to maintain an adequate sitting posture.
• Orientation to print.

Activities to promote these and other underlying skills can be easily incorporated into the day.

Activities such as playdough promote hand strength and fine motor skills which are pre-requisites for good hand writing. Make sure your child has enough time to play!

Playdough Recipe
1 cup flour
1/4 cup salt
2 tablespoons cream of tarter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup water
Food coloring
Any flavoring for smell – optional

Mix all ingredients in a pan over medium heat. Stir over medium heat 3 to 5 minutes. When mixture forms a ball in the pan, remove. Knead until smooth. Store in a plastic bag.

Kindergarten Writing Readiness Skills (Occupational And Physical Therapy)

Children need to have many whole body experiences to provide the trunk, shoulder, arm, wrist, and finger control necessary to learn to write, attend to developmental activities and table work in kindergarten. Large wooden blocks for construction, swings, slides, climbing structures, sandboxes, tricycles, and other large muscle activities are basic play activities. They provide the normal physical activity needed for developing postural stability and upper body strength that is so important in writing and other fine motor skills.

Chalkboard activities, easel painting, ceramic clay, and other pre-writing experiences provide the opportunity to use the whole arm instead of just bracing the wrist on the desk while making tiny (tiring) finger movements. Readiness for writing begins on the playground and the park, not in the classroom at a desk.

Pre-writing skills require children understanding directions: top, bottom, middle, up, under, side, etc. They should be able to cross the midline of the body, use two hands together and coordinate their eyes and hands. Playground activities promote these skills.

Encouraging a mature grasp when coloring/writing and providing a variety of fine motor experiences helps a mature/efficient grasp to be developed by the child. The small muscles (intrinsic muscles) of the hand are vital for skilled movement and efficient functional grasp of a pencil. As the hand develops, the thumb side becomes more skilled in precision while the other side, the power side, becomes stronger
for static holding. Use of a large pencil/marker/crayon supports the balance of the intrinsic muscles of the hand and helps keep the web space open and rounded. However, if a long pencil/marker encourages a fisted/power grasp try short/little pieces of crayon/pencil to get the normal fingertip grasp. Activities that encourage small muscle development in the hand include the normal play activities of: snapping fingers; finger songs; spinning a top; mold, roll, play with clay; play games with cards, coins, chips, or pegs; work on stringing, lacing; use tweezers or eye droppers; use a hole punch, etc.

A multisensory approach in learning to trace and copy shapes is another prewriting skill. Working in shaving cream, painting on an easel, using a small piece of chalk on a chalkboard, air writing with the whole arm, etc. to learn these basic shapes supports learning the letter formations later.

If your child appears interested in printing letters, then practice correct letter formation using a multisensory approach. Model the correct grasp and correct letter (top to bottom and left to right principle) formation, encourage your child to imitate you and guide them to practice correctly. Good habits are so important!! Developmentally it is easier to learn capitals first: FEDPB-RNM-HKL-UVWXYZ-COQG-SAITJ

Continue reading for more suggestions for readiness activities for your child. We do believe that a child’s work is their play…enjoy and support your child through play.

After age 5 the child rapidly advances. Children understand many more words than they can say.

Fluency

Hesitations in speech are normal from ages 3 to 6. Listen to your child; encourage and praise your child. Don't appear anxious about speech. Ordinarily, children do not become concerned about nonfluencies or fear them, unless they have been made unduly aware of them. Try to keep your own speech clear and unhurried. If you are very concerned, consult a speech and language pathologist for help. What Parents Can Do:

• Talk to your child about everything. Children need a lot of verbal stimulation from infancy onward. Play games with sounds and words including rhyming games.
• Listen to your child and expand on the language used by your child. Use well-formed sentences that are a little longer than the ones used by your child. Use new vocabulary.
• Read to your child frequently. Talk about pictures and situations in books. Your child learns new vocabulary, concepts, and the patterns of language as you read. Use the library and make reading a part of your daily home life.
• Play games with your child. Through games, children can learn coordination, following rules, communication with others, and new concepts.
• Classify. Help your child make scrapbooks or sort things to learn concepts of color, size, matching, and comparisons.
• Provide new experiences. Take field trips, make things, cook, do science experiments. Talk about all of these.
• Make language and speech fun for your child. Reinforce your child’s attempts and use praise.

“Get Ready To Learn”

ALL children need large doses of small and large motor tasks to help their bodies develop and learn. Children learn first by doing. The more variations of movement that children perform, the better they can organize and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Research shows that our children are becoming less fit and their choice of activities tend to be non-motor tasks: TV and computer games. The Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy Motor Team of Lake Oswego School District recommends and encourages the following “ing” words for FUN activities for your children:

Doing: Through games and on the playground – running, jumping, leaping, hopping, skipping, climbing, hanging swinging, rolling, spinning, balancing, bouncing, throwing, catching, kicking, hitting balls.

Planning: Going forward, backward, sideward, blindfolded obstacle course (over, under, through, around, between).

Feeling: Variety and opportunity to explore water, sand, mud, shaving cream, rice, dried beans, clay, playdough, silly putty, cookie dough.

Living: Daily learning skills – sorting silverware, putting away clothes, wiping/washing dishes, carrying groceries, sweeping, raking, making bed, stirring, mixing, measuring, pouring.

Manipulating: Finger skills – pegs, blocks, beads, cards, puzzles, Lego, tinker toys, coloring, cutting, pasting, tracing, dot-to-dot, buttoning, snapping, zipping, lacing, tying, touch thumb to each fingertip, finger games, finger puppets.

Writing: All of the above are foundation skills for writing. Encourage pencil grip with thumb pad and fingertip. Use large primary pencil, grip stix pencil, Stetro pencil grips, draw letters in the air, in finger painting, in playdough.

The above, normal play activities, promote alertness, orientation, and organization needed for classroom tasks. The “work” of a child is Play. Through small and large motor play activities, you are promoting school readiness.