School Readiness is important. When your child is going off to school, you want to make sure that they are ready. However, as a parent, it can seem that kindergarten requirements change every year. The good news is that they really don’t change as much as you think. Getting your child ready for school will take patience, but it is well worth it.
Academic Skills
Academic skills are essential for all levels of education. However, getting children academically ready for school is not a challenging as it seems. Academic skills are beginning at this stage, so you shouldn’t expect full reading or writing skills, but your child should be ready to begin some of the activities in the classroom.
Phonemic and Graphemic Awareness
It may feel overwhelming to see these words, but they are not the tedious undertaking they appear. Phonemes are the small units of sound that combine to make words, and graphemes are the letter representations. Children prepare for reading by playing with sound through rhyme and silly words or playing with shapes in drawing or scribbling. By reading to your child, you demonstrate the directionality of words and sentences, and children learn stories and social norms.
Social Skills
Whether your child attends a public school, private facility, or is homeschooled, they will need to hone their social skills. You may wonder how social skills can prepare a child for academic learning, but poor social development can negatively affect their educational pursuits. Children need to learn to listen to teachers, take turns with toys, and wait in line. These are all social skills that can be demonstrated through social interactions. They can also pretend to take on the roles of the authority figures in their lives. Learning through play is invaluable to learning social skills.
Emotional Control
No four-to-six-year-old will be able to control their emotions 100% of the time. However, children at this age will need to be able to handle some adversity without melting down. You should allow your child to try to do things that are beyond their current skill level. Some level of frustration is good for children because it helps them develop creative thinking and problem-solving skills. On the other hand, do not make them feel so overwhelmed they can no longer enjoy an activity.
Children in kindergarten need enough emotional control to handle adversity, but they do not need to be emotionless either. They need to also have empathy for others. Empathy can be developed through interactions with peers outside of their typical social group. They can learn about diverse groups through authentic interactions. Even if you are homeschooling your child, interactions can take place through community groups or recreational facilities.
Final Thoughts on school readiness
School readiness does not have to mean sitting in front of your child with lecture-style lessons. You can, however, spend time with your child, letting them explore their environment and interacting in various situations. As a result, they will learn through play and observation as much as formal “teaching” and lessons.
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