Is Your Preschooler Ready for Kindergarten?

By Jessica McDowell 

      You may remember Kindergarten as a wonderful year of snack, nap, and play time, but today your Preschooler needs to be prepared for an actual school environment when he/she heads into the classroom. I’ve compiled a good need-to-know checklist so you can see how ready your Preschooler is for his/her big day. 

Can your Preschooler… 

• Listen to stories without interrupting
• Recognize rhyming sounds
• Pay attention for short periods of time to adult-directed tasks
• Understand actions have both causes and effects
• Show understanding of general times of day
• Cut with scissors
• Trace basic shapes
• Begin to share with others
• Start to follow rules
• Be able to recognize authority
• Manage bathroom needs
• Button shirts, pants, coats, and zip up zippers
• Begin to control oneself
• Separate from parents without being upset
• Speak understandably
• Talk in complete sentences of five to six words
• Look at pictures and then tell stories
• Identify rhyming words
• Identify the beginning sound of some words
• Identify some alphabet letters
• Recognize some common sight words like "stop"
• Sort similar objects by color, size, and shape
• Recognize groups of one, two, three, four, and five objects
• Count to ten
• Bounce a ball

   Remember children at this age change and absorb information and tasks quickly. Just because he/she cannot do something this week does not mean they will not be doing it next week, so check with them often. 

      This checklist is a guide to help you prepare your Preschooler and work with him/her on items they may not have mastered yet. As long as your child has mastered most items on this list they will do wonderfully in a Kindergarten setting. Remember teachers want to see a child who is eager to learn so don’t stress if your child has not mastered every skill on this list.