Ready for Kindergarten • How to Help Your Child

Grade K Ready For Kindergarten

How to Help Your Child

You can help your child develop the skills, knowledge, and behaviors to support kindergarten readiness through everyday experiences and activities.

In addition to the suggestions included in the Pre-K Family and Community Resources course, the following activities help you support your child's readiness.

Language & Literacy

• Take turns asking and answering questions.
• Check out books from the library and read together daily. Take turns turning the pages and pointing to the pictures. Ask questions about what will happen next or what happened at the end.
• Make up stories together. Staple a few pieces of paper together and record the story you created. Help your child illustrate the story.
• Provide directions with two or more steps, such as "put on your shoes and button your jacket."
• Play with letters! Place some letters (magnetic, recorded on notecards or scraps of paper, etc.) in a bag or hat. Have your child pick a letter and say it's name. Practice it's sound. Try to find objects in your house that start with the same sound.
• Look for letters outside your home: signs, stores, food packages, etc. How many can you name together?
• Practice identifying rhyming words. Come up with words that rhyme with their name or family members' names. Select an object in your home; can you come up with words that rhyme with that object? They can be real words or silly, make believe words!
• Help your child write their name in shaving cream, sand, or finger paint. Stamp out the letters of their name in play-dough, or roll "dough snakes" and use them to spell their name. Use a paintbrush dipped in water and have your child write their name on the sidewalk.

Physical Well-being & Motor Development

• Play "Simon Says," "Red Light, Green Light," and other games to practice different movement such as run, jump, hop, skip, etc.
• Use a highlighter or marker to draw short lines on a piece of paper. Help your child snip or cut along the lines.
• Push beads or small objects such as Legos into clay or play dough. Have your child pick out the beads or objects.
• Help your child learn to wash their hands independently.
• Help your child practice zipping, buttoning, and snapping.
• Help your child practice opening and closing containers, placing and snapping caps on markers, etc.
• Create puzzles for your child to play by cutting the front of different ceral boxes into 8-12 pieces.

Mathematics

• Grab a handful of objects (dried pasta, beads, Legos, toy cars, etc.). Count the objects.
• Look for numbers outside your home: signs, stores, food packages, etc. How many can you name together?
• When checking out at the grocery store, count objects as you place them on the conveyor belt or in your bag. When unloading groceries, count how many you have of different items (e.g., bananas, cans). Which have the most? The least? If you have 3 apples and eat 1, how many will you have left?
• Have your child sort laundry into groups (socks, pants, groups) or by color. Count the total in each group. Compare quantities.
• Gather a shoe from each family member. Sequence them from smallest to longest.
• Go on a shape hunt in your house and in your community. How many circles can you find? Triangles? As you search, discuss the attributes of each shape (sides, corners, etc.). Try with 2-D shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectange, hexagon, rhobmus) and 3-D figures (cubes, spheres, pyramids, cones).
• Gather a few different objects of varying weights and sizes. Compare their weight, length, and/or height. Use words such as ligther, heavier, long, short, tall, etc.

Social Foundations

• Talk about feelings, and practice using words such as happy, angry, and mad, as well as new words such as excited, frustrated, and calm. 
• When reading a book, stop to discuss a character's problem. Come up with ways to solve the problem. Finish the book. Was your solution the same or different? 
• When you encounter problems in real life, discuss different solutions. Encourage your child to try the solution. Did the solution work well? Why or why not? If the chosen solution didn't work, what could you try next time?
• Have your child to contribute to household routines such as cleaning up and putting away toys, pushing in chairs, or hanging up their coat.
• Play board games or card games to practice following rules and turn-taking.