How To Get Your Child Ready for Kindergarten
The transition to kindergarten is a big one that brings on a mix of emotions for kids and parents. It also brings up two key questions:
Are THEY ready to start kindergarten? 🤔
Are YOU ready for them to start kindergarten? 🥺😅
We’re parents, too, so we get the big feelings you might be having about kindergarten. And while we can’t help you too much with the emotional transition you’re experiencing, we can tell you we’re right there beside you in it! And, we can help you understand the skills your child needs to truly be kindergarten-ready.
We hope this post helps ease your worries about whether or not they’ll be ready to learn all the new things kindergarten will teach them. So that all you have to do is help them process their feelings about the change. (And work through yours!)
Why Kindergarten Readiness Isn’t About Academics
If you google or ask around about kindergarten readiness, chances are you’ll get advice that’s heavily academic-focused. Most people seem to think that for a child, being “ready” for kindergarten means knowing all their colors, shapes, and—most importantly—their letters and numbers by heart.
But even though there’s a big push for academics in kindergarten readiness, this kind of information is a very small component of your child’s overall development. If you look at the bigger picture and what it really takes for a child to be successful in a school setting, you’ll see that early language and communication skills play a much bigger role in giving them a solid start.
The Skills Your Child Really Needs For Kindergarten
As parents, we love learning from Susie from Busy Toddler. She’s an education advocate and former teacher, so she knows firsthand what sets up kids for success at school. Things like:
Following a multi-step direction
Asking an adult for help
Trying 2 or 3 strategies to solve a peer problem
Asking questions when they need more information
Sharing and taking turns with communal toys
Winning and losing graciously
Listening to a story without interrupting
Being able to self-entertain
Knowing how to fail and try again
Being able to make a decision
Being able to self-regulate
Susie’s blog post and checklist on kindergarten readiness are what inspired this post. When we read through that list with our speech therapist hats on, we absolutely agree with each skill!
So instead of making a brand new list of kindergarten readiness skills, we decided to expand a bit upon hers!
In the next few sections, we’re going to take each communication-focused skill on Susie’s list, and dive deeper into the speech and language context behind it. Our advice will help you break down the skills. Because the overall skill may seem a bit far off for your child, we have to start small and build up from there! Then, we’ll give you practical ways to work on each one with your child. (We’ll also add a few of our own kindergarten readiness tips at the end!)
Skill #1 Following Multi-Step Directions
Susie’s advice: “School is full of multi-step tasks and so is life. Being able to remember a set of instructions – and finish a task fully – is huge. So is being able to take direction from another person. We need to make sure our kids have follow-through, have the ability to listen to a set of directions, and to complete a job.”
Our advice: Before your child can follow multi-step directions, they need to be able to follow one-step directions. If they can’t do that yet, start small!
Describe what they’re doing in the moment to help them associate words with what’s happening. For example, “We put your socks on.” “Washing your hands. Wash, wash, wash.”
Use gestures to help their understanding. Gestures make words more visual and concrete.
Keep language simple and concise to help your child understand what’s being said.
Give a lot of support with following through with directions if your child seems to not be understanding. So if you say, “Go get your shoes,” and they don’t seem to understand, walk with them while repeating the direction. Just be sure to keep this light and fun and remember that it may take a lot of repetition.
Make it fun! Try letting your child be the leader by giving you directions. Play games like Simon Says.
Help your child understand the meaning of individual words often used when giving directions. For example, do they understand words like “in”, “on”, “under”, and “next to”? If not, try to work these concepts into play, like Katie’s doing with her son in this reel:
#2 Asking An Adult (Not A Relative) For Help
Susie’s Advice: “There are lots of adults in school and being able to ask for help, talk to, and listen to them is a big deal. Your child being comfortable with going up to a volunteer or recess teacher (whom they might only vaguely know) is going to be critical.”
Our Advice: This is a key skill that can feel daunting, especially to kids who are shy or slow to warm up. Here’s how you can help your child work up to comfortably talking to newer adults:
Give them a choice between two items. When they have the chance to hear both words, it might feel less intimidating than requesting something on their own.
Your child may need a lot of modeling in the beginning. Model the words you think they would say if they could, and if you can, do it in context, because context is helpful for them. For example, if you see them turning away or pushing away something you know they don’t want, model the words, “No, thank you” so they can learn the skill within the correct context.
Help your child speak up for themselves in an environment they’re comfortable with, like at home, during family mealtimes, and throughout their daily routines. Try serving a meal family-style to give your child a chance to ask for what they’d like.
Play! Play store, grocery shopping, and restaurant. Take turns in the different roles. Play is an excellent way to practice skills like asking for help, answering and asking questions, being assertive, having a conversation, and more. It can really help them gain confidence in a safe setting!
Practice. Let your child order for themselves at a restaurant or talk to cashiers when you go shopping. You’ll be right there if they need a little supportive coaching.
#3 Trying 2-3 Strategies To Solve A Problem With A Friend
Susie’s Advice: Our kids need to have a toolbox of ideas for how to solve a problem with a peer BEFORE they need adult intervention. This starts with you, the parent: Pause before you get involved. Give a second to let kids try before you come in to help.”
Our Advice: Social communication skills take time to develop, and we often have too high of expectations of toddlers just learning to navigate social situations. These skills are still very much developing during kindergarten and throughout the early elementary years so expect this to take time, but know it’s great you're getting a jump on it now.
Start slow with your child by:
Modeling what to do. This will be your best friend here! Your child may need to hear examples of things they can say many times before they start saying them on their own. During play, you could model things like, "Sure! You can have a turn when I'm finished" or, "Please stop."
Helping them make the implicit explicit. Observe others and point out the ways their nonverbal communication is sending us messages. For example, you could say, “Ella is turning her body away. It looks like she doesn’t want to play anymore.”
Modeling play interactions with stuffed animals, toys, or little characters. Your child can even just watch you do this in the beginning. Demonstrate real situations you find your child facing, like getting a toy taken away, someone not wanting to share, hitting or kicking, feeling mad or disappointed, etc. Then model appropriate coping strategies like taking deep breaths, naming feelings, or hitting something safe like a pillow.
Watching Daniel Tiger! We love all of the problem-solving going on between Daniel and his friends.
Giving yourself—and your child—grace. There are lots of new situations you and your child will be navigating, and they won’t always get it right the first time. Neither will you! And that’s okay.
#4 Asking A Question When They Need More Information
Susie’s Advice: “I always tell my kids (and I used to tell my students) that smart people are smart because they ask questions. They don’t sit there. They don’t hang their head when they don’t get it. They aren’t silent, sitting in their questions. Instead, smart people ASK. They seek information. “I’m smart enough to say “I don’t know” is a great phrase to teach your kids (and model this by using it when you don’t know something).”
Our Advice: Create more opportunities for your child to ask questions throughout the day.
Intentionally give them their meal but don’t give them a fork, or give them their cup with nothing inside. This will encourage them to practice forming a question. They may need a lot of modeling in the beginning and that’s okay.
Model asking questions yourself. Things like “Steve, where do I turn to get to the park?” “How many cups of sugar does the recipe say we need?” or “I'm curious, why do you think the birds start chirping so early in the morning during the summer? I don't know why they do that.”
Practice while reading books. Model questions and comments for your child like, “I wonder what will happen next?”, “I see trees on the front cover. I wonder if this book is about the forest. What do you think it’s going to be about?”
#5 Sharing & Taking Turns with Communal Toys
Susie’s Advice: “There’s a lot out there in the parenting world about not forcing kids to share, and I get that. You won’t see me sharing my iPhone or car with someone else. Some items are just yours. But at school, most toys and equipment are communal. It doesn’t belong to any one child. It’s different than it is at home where toys may have a clear “owner.”
Our Advice: Practice sharing and taking turns at communal places like parks and libraries.
Practice sharing and turn-taking with your child in these settings before you expect the skills to translate to their peers.
Model phrases like, "Can I have a turn when you're done?"
Explicitly explain to them that some items in the home and classroom belong to everyone, so it's important to think of the group (or family) as a whole.
#6 Winning & Losing Graciously
Susie’s Advice: “Please let your child lose. Don’t let them win at Go Fish every. single. time. They will not win at everything in school and that is a hard lesson to learn with 20 other kids staring back at you. In life, we don’t always win. This is a lesson we learn in childhood, but what happens to the kids who don’t learn this lesson? How is their self-esteem later in life? Have they accidentally made a connection to self-worth and winning? Conversely, we need to teach children to WIN graciously and respectfully. They need to understand that winning is part of the game, but the fun was in the playing.”
Our Advice: Remember that feelings like sadness and anger are valid. It’s not about not being upset, it’s about working through those feelings in productive ways.
Practice playing and losing some of our favorite games for preschoolers
Model constructive coping strategies
Related: Social Skill Development in Toddlers
#7 Having A Strong Vocabulary
This skill is a Wee Talkers addition! Kids with large vocabularies have an easier time learning how to read. Help your child build their vocabulary by:
Having daily reading and storytimes.
If your toddler seems to need support with saying more words, we have a course to help you learn how to get them talking and communicating more. It’s called, TalkToddler.
When they say a word, add on a synonym as you repeat it back to them, like this.
#8 Understanding Early Literacy Concepts
Another Wee Talkers addition? Reading together daily (or as often as you can) to help your child understand early literacy concepts!
Key early literacy skills are things like:
Using information from pictures in books to help them learn about print.
Identifying the front and back of a book.
Having lots of experience listening to and telling stories.
Understanding that print moves from left to right (within a word and across the lines of a text).
Using their background experience to make sense of a text.
These are skills you can practice easily at home with your child by having conversations about books while you’re reading together! Give it a try during your next storytime.
Avoiding Kindergarten Readiness Overwhelm
Before we send you on your way, we want to take a minute to discuss the overwhelm that you might be feeling right now. We know the end goal of having a “kindergarten-ready child” might seem pretty daunting, so we want to make sure you know how to get started without upending your current routine or adding too much to your plate—or your child’s.
Break It Down
Use our tips to break down each one of Susie’s kindergarten readiness skills, and figure out where your child is at right now. Meet them where they’re at, and take baby steps from there. They don’t need to go from where they are today to kindergarten-ready tomorrow, so take it one day, one step, and one skill at a time.
Be Patient
Some children pick these skills up pretty easily, but many need time. Lots of the families we work with find that their kids benefit from extra support in learning these skills. Or, they find that these skills take lots of practice. We know it’s tough, but try to be patient.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Practicing these skills often and repeating new things will help your child learn. The best way to practice is throughout your days and regular routines. We agree with Susie when she says these skills have to be learned through daily life and activities like songs, rhymes, play, and storytimes.
Get Started With This Free Storytime Video
If you’re not sure where to start, or you’d love to see what it looks like to practice these skills with your child in a way that still feels fun and natural, download our free preschool storytime video! So many of the moms who join are actually teachers and they know the importance of high-quality screen time.
In the video, you’ll see us reading a story to your child in a way that supports their communication skills. Watch it to learn some tips for yourself or press play, let your child watch and learn, and take a few minutes for yourself. It’s up to you!