Kindergarten Readiness

Is My Child Ready for Kindergarten?

Here are some suggestions to help your child develop key thinking and learning skills for kindergarten. When your child enters school, he or she should be able to:

Speak and Listen:

• Use and understand many words

• Use language to communicate

• Speak in complete sentences

• Ask questions

• Make simple rhymes

• Make up and share personal stories about his or her interests
  
  

Read and Write:

• Show an interest in reading activities

• Select familiar books and tell why he or she likes them

• Retell favorite stories from books

• Handle a book appropriately

• Recognize some letters

• Recognize and print his or her first name

• Use pencils, markers and crayons to draw and write
  
  

Build Physical Ability:

• Choose activities that use his or her body

• Dress himself or herself independently

• Use his or her body for creative expression
  
  

Use Mathematics:

• Be curious about and interested in number-related activities

• Describe and talk about objects that have different sizes, colors, shapes and patterns

• Sort items by “same” and “different”

• Sort familiar objects from smallest to largest, shortest to tallest and lightest to heaviest

• Use words like “near, far, top, bottom, under, first, second and last” to describe the position of objects

• Count and match the number to an object

• Recognize some numbers
  
  

Participate and Cooperate:

• Work and play together with other children

• Stay involved in an activity to its completion

• Follow routines and directions

• Work out problems with others

• Understand other people’s feelings

Investigate, Experiment Discover:

• Compare and group objects according to shapes, sizes, living/nonliving and others

• Show interest in simple and safe experiments

• Show curiosity, ask questions and explain why things happen

• Use words that describe changes, motion, position, order and attributes

• Use the senses to observe, describe and predict the environment