How to Prepare your Child for Kindergarten
Kindergarten is a milestone in your child’s life. It is their first step into formal education. However, for many children it is not their first school experience. Attending preschool is becoming increasingly more the norm than the exception and a quality early childhood experience can contribute significantly to a child’s overall success as they take that inevitable first step. Because we share a mutual goal for that success, it is the job of both parents and preschool educators to help prepare them for this huge leap. The expectations are to make sure your child has the necessary skills to excel and to put them on the playing field with their peers. Understanding that, with a partnership between school and home to support it, our play based curriculum at La Casa Preschool is designed to develop students academically as well as emotionally and socially for the important next phase.
Kindergarten Readiness
La Casa Preschool is committed to providing a strong foundation of learning through meaningful, age appropriate activities and challenges, which are best introduced in a play-based method. Starting with our 3 Year Old Programs, where large muscle activities are practiced and small muscle activities are introduced, children participate in exploratory learning where creativity is encouraged. Name recognition, beginning math skills in counting, sorting and classification, language and literacy skills through books and library time, as well as art, all support learning in the young child.
By the time our students enter into our Kindergarten Prep classrooms, greater emphasis is placed upon academic skill development. Children practice classroom protocol through responsibility building techniques. Accountability is expected for managing self-directed table/center activities at the beginning of each day, such as letter or writing activities, using organizational skills in the care of their own work materials, and for fully participating in all learning areas during class time. Kindergarten attributes and in depth conceptual ideas are reinforced throughout the daily curriculum and routine, including extended math, science, pre-reading with application of phonemic awareness and writing.
Preparing at Home
Parents often ask how they can help. Below is a list of skills that you can practice at home to prepare your child for kindergarten.
Read books everyday.
Develop fine motor skills: holding a pencil, coloring, cutting with scissors.
Print first name with only the first letter capitalized.
Learn to follow 2-step instructions: "Please go get your shoes and then put them on."
Use good manners: "Please" and "Thank You."
Talk about social skills: sharing, taking turns, positive words, talk about handling anger.
Help your child take responsibility: clean up messes, dress themselves, get their own snakes.
Practice number recognition: count objects daily.
Practice letter and sound recognition. Practice saying the letters and their sounds every day.
Build self-esteem. Praise your child often because Kindergarten is hard!
Kindergarten Readiness at La Casa Preschool
Interesting in learning how our program could help your child prepare for lifelong learning success? We invite you and your child to tour our North Scottsdale preschool campus, see our engaging classrooms, and hear about our play based curriculum. Contact us anytime to schedule a tour.