What Should Kids Know Before Kindergarten?
Early childhood education is essential in setting a foundation for a child’s future academic and social success. Parents and guardians play an important part in fostering the skills children need to thrive in kindergarten.
This article will outline key areas children should develop before entering kindergarten and offer some tips on how you can start to implement and nurture these skills with your child at home.
Social and Emotional Skills
Before entering kindergarten, it will be helpful for your child to develop these social and emotional skills.
Understanding and expressing emotions
Following rules
Ability to interact with adults and peers
Sharing and taking turns
Listening to others
Maintaining focus and attention in a group setting
Importance in Kindergarten
Social and emotional skills can lay the groundwork for a positive learning environment. By understanding their emotions and learning how to express them, your child can reduce frustration, improve communication skills and work with others more easily.
These skills help them build relationships with classmates and manage their emotions effectively.
Tips for Development at Home
You can start developing these skills at home by incorporating them into games and stories.
Role-playing games
Engage in role-playing activities that allow your child to express different emotions and respond to various social scenarios. Play a game of Emotion Charades where family members act out different emotions, and others have to guess what emotions they are.
Storytime discussion
After reading a story together, discuss the characters, their emotions and their actions. Ask your child how they may feel in a similar situation or how they could help the character in this situation.
Cognitive Skills
Before entering kindergarten, it will be helpful for your child to build these cognitive skills.
Recognizing letters and numbers
Basic counting and sorting
Identifying shapes and colors
Understanding basic patterns
Following simple instructions
Recognizing their name in print
Importance in Kindergarten
Building your child’s cognitive skills can help them find success in kindergarten. Recognizing letters and numbers forms a basis for reading and math skills, while counting and sorting can help them form problem-solving skills. With these foundational skills, your child can better engage with their school curriculum and build confidence in their learning potential.
Tips for Development at Home
You can support your child’s cognitive skills at home with hands-on activities before kindergarten begins.
Counting during daily activities
Create counting games out of your regular activities. Count items while grocery shopping or sort them by color, shape and size.
Shape and color hunts
Go on a hunt around your house or neighborhood to find and identify different shapes and colors. You can also incorporate counting—if you see a row of three trees while walking in your neighborhood, count them out loud together.
Language Skills
Before entering kindergarten, it will be helpful for your child to build these language skills.
Basic vocabulary and sentence formation
Listening and understanding instructions
Naming common objects and people
Asking and answering questions
Narrating simple stories or events
Recognizing rhyming words
Understanding simple prepositions (e.g., in, on, under)
Importance in Kindergarten
Language skills are fundamental for effective communication and learning. Building their vocabulary and ability to form sentences helps children express their thoughts clearly and accurately. Listening and understanding instructions are essential for following classroom directions, participating in group activities and comprehending lessons.
Tips for Development at Home
Learn how to incorporate teaching literacy skills in story time and other fun ways for your child to prepare them for kindergarten.
Singing songs and nursery rhymes
Singing sessions with songs and nursery rhymes can help your child build their vocabulary and rhythm in language.
Conversation practice
Start regular conversations with your child, asking open-ended questions and encouraging detailed responses.
Storytelling and rhyming
Read stories together, identify and create rhymes, and have your child make up their own stories. You can also ask follow-up questions to encourage them to add details to their story,
Physical and Motor Skills
Before entering kindergarten, it will be helpful for your child to develop these physical and motor skills.
Running, jumping, climbing
Using pencils and scissors
Balancing on one foot
Throwing and catching a ball
Building with blocks
Zipping and unzipping
Using utensils properly
Importance in Kindergarten
Physical and motor skills are vital for participating in playground activities and classroom tasks. Motor skills like running and jumping aid physical development and coordination, and fine motor skills like using pencils and scissors are essential for writing and other detailed tasks.
Tips for Development at Home
Your child can move and groove into kindergarten after learning these physical and motor skills at home before the first day of school.
Playground visits
Visit the playground for running, jumping and climbing. You can also introduce simple sports and games that involve physical movement.
Arts and crafts
Introduce arts and crafts, including drawing, cutting with scissors, building with block sets, and craft projects with different materials to support their skills and creativity.
Practice dressing skills
Allow your child to help dress themselves by practicing buttoning and zipping. They can also practice their skills by using utensils during meal times.
Self-care and Independence Skills
Before entering kindergarten, it will be helpful for your child to know these self-care and independence skills.
Dressing oneself
Washing hands after using the bathroom
Managing personal belongings
Cleaning up after playtime
Brushing teeth
Using the bathroom by themselves
Pouring a drink
Opening and closing containers
Importance in Kindergarten
Self-care and independence skills allow children to care for themselves and their belongings, fostering a sense of responsibility and confidence. These skills are crucial for daily routines in kindergarten, such as managing personal items and maintaining hygiene.
Tips for Development at Home
Teaching your child self-care practices and independence skills can help them confidently take on kindergarten.
Practice routines
Help your child begin regular routines by starting small. About a month before the first day of school, practice washing their hands after every bathroom break, dressing themselves in the morning and brushing their teeth.
Responsibility and chores
Your child can help with daily tasks and household chores like helping put away laundry and cleaning up their toys after playtime to encourage independence and responsibility.
Packing a bag
Teach your child how to pack and organize their own bag for school. You can help build excitement around starting kindergarten by taking them to pick out a backpack, lunch box and other school supplies.
Preparing Your Child for Success in Kindergarten
Filling your child’s toolbox with the social, cognitive, language, physical and self-care skills they need can help set them up for a successful start to kindergarten. By starting these lessons at home with activities, games and stories, parents and guardians can help their kids prepare for the new challenges and opportunities in school.
Get more resources on preparing your child for kindergarten, and encourage your child’s development today to support a bright future tomorrow.