Kindergarten Kickstart : Introduction

You’ve registered your five {or six} year old for kindergarten, visited the owl-themed classrooms, and bitten your nails to the quick while your baby completed the kindergarten screening assessments. Target has gigantic pencils hanging from the ceiling and pointing you toward loose-leaf notebook paper, lunch boxes, and shag carpets for lockers. {Yes. That is an actual thing.}

In a few weeks, you’ll get a welcome packet from your child’s school, perhaps revealing the name of the lucky teacher who gets to be in the company of your kid for the next nine-ish months. {The significance of this length of time does not escape you.} Also in the envelope, a list of needed supplies - some items so specific and others quite vague - that make even the highest degree-holding parents anxious about selecting a plastic pocket folder with prongs and differentiating between a notebook and a composition book. And they need to have how many glue sticks?!?

Then at night as you’re watching your baby, who-isn’t-so-baby-but-is-still-your-baby, eat his macaroni and cheese or giving her a bath, you think to yourself:

Is she ready? 

Is he ready?

Am I ready?

<<<<>>>>

Enter Kindergarten Kickstart. 

This mini-series is designed to give you some hints, tips, and pointers on how to prepare you and your child for Kindergarten. My hunch is when you read the list of suggested things your child should be able to do or is working toward, you’ll breathe a sigh of relief. So relax; your child doesn’t need to be able to add, subtract, count to 100, read a beginner text, or even know all of the letter sounds to start Kindergarten. Those are the things they’ll learn in Kindergarten. Your child just needs to be reasonably prepared to begin.

This series will cover 5 areas:

1 <> Self-Care Skills

2 <> Literacy Prep

3 <> Mathematics Prep

4 <> Parent Prep

5 <> Teachers' Thoughts

Also, I am happy to answer any questions you have about your child starting Kindergarten!

I’m excited to share my teaching experience and knowledge of the workings of a public school Kindergarten with you all and hope that it gets you a bit closer to ready.