Helpful Tips to Parents to Prepare Your Child for Kindergarten

After you have preregistered your child for Kindergarten, the teacher may give you list of items you can work on with your child during the summer to prepare him/her for Kindergarten. Here are a few tips you can use to practice with your child:


1. To learn his/her name, have your child practice saying his/her whole name. For example, if your call him TJ Smith for short, have him repeat his whole name: Thomas James Smith.

2. To learn colors, use color words when dressing: blue jeans, red shirt, brown socks, for example. Use color words when playing with toys: green tractor, yellow ball, orange top. Use color words with animals: black cat, brown dog, grey and white horse. Look for colors in nature: pink flowers, green grass, purple flowers, blue sky, yellow sun, white moon, for example.

3. To learn counting: practice counting fingers, toes, toys, books, etc. Work on counting objects up to 10. Start with three and then add on and until your child begins to understand the concept of counting items in sequence of 1-10. This takes a lot of practice so don't be discouraged if your child doesn't know all of the numbers before starting into Kindergarten.

4. To learn how to cut with scissors: make safety scissors available for your child to practice cutting play dough, scrap paper, old newspaper pages, and old magazine pages. It is important to set safety rules for using scissors and always supervise your child's cutting practice. To help strengthen your child's fine motor skills (hand muscles), have your child squeeze play dough or small rubber balls. This is a good exercise for the fingers so he will be able to hold the scissors more comfortably.

5. To learn how to write: small hands need larger pencils or markers to grip to practice writing. Scribble is an appropriate developmental stage that all children have to go through to learn how to write. So encourage your child to make marks freely on paper, cardboard boxes, old newspapers and magazines. Sidewalk chalk is another way to help your child learn to handle writing and drawing.

6. To learn shapes: help your child identify shapes around your home. Look for circles in the kitchen with lids on containers or tops on jars. Think about food items that are circular: like cookies, pancakes, sausage, and tomato slices. Then there are CDs and DVDs and old records that make perfect circle examples. Try looking for squares and rectangles with cereal boxes, granola bars, and pop-tarts. Triangles may be a little more challenging to find but you can use some snack food items that have triangles shapes in them. Make "shape-hunting" a game and be on the lookout for circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles.

7. To learn the alphabet: sing the alphabet song with your child. Watch kids' shows, like Sesame Street, where alphabet letters are taught. Read alphabet books and visit your local library for extra help.

All of the skills mentioned will be taught in Kindergarten so don't feel that your child has to master them all this summer. But your are giving your child a great start to learning how to read and write and do math. Your dedication to helping your child will make a positive impact on his/her time in school.