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Having a child who is about to enter Kindergarten is a very exciting experience.  Your child is growing up and will be starting one of the most important and memorable years of their life. I am sure that you might also be anxious.  Your child will be going to a new school, will have a different daily routine than previous years, and will be in a classroom with lots of kids. Don’t worry, you are not the only one feeling anxious! Many other parents and children are feeling the same way. Help your child adjust and plan for the upcoming year by creating a Kindergarten social story.

Take your child to their new school and walk around. Play on the playground, walk around the building and down the halls. Show your child the cafeteria, gym and music room. You might also be able to peak in their new classroom. At every juncture, take a picture. Put the pictures in a book, possibly on index cards and write captions on each page. Have your child create the book with you. Read your child the book every night before bed. Most children are visual learners. Providing your child with a picture book about the upcoming year will give them confidence, make them feel excited and help them adjust.

Don’t forget to take pictures of your child on their first day. You will want to remember this forever!

Many of you have asked me what your child is expected to know when entering Kindergarten. I have outlined some objectives in my post “Getting Ready for Kindergarten“. Below are some activities that you can do with your child to ensure success! Remember to pick activities that your child is able to do or is ready to undertake.

Cut and Paste:
In Kindergarten, your children will be completing cut and paste activities. Click here and check out:
ABC order (preschool)
Shapes (preschool)
Numerical order, numbers 1-10

Counting:
Your children will be counting objects up to 10, using one-to-one correspondence. For example, when the child sees the number 3, they can hand you 3 items.
Click here for dinosaur, fish and color counters.

Cutting Activities:
Click here for a house and a kite puzzle. Your child can work on cutting out the shapes and putting the objects together. They might have difficulty cutting out the smaller objects so make sure you help them if they need assistance.

Dot to Dot:
Dot to dot activities are beneficial for your children because they promote arm control and eye hand coordination. Click here for activities that work on connecting numbers 1-10. The spelling dot to dot might be too difficult.

Sewing Cards:
Click here and check out the template for the circle, heart, triangle or square. Put the shape on poster board and punch out the holes. Provide your child with a thick piece of yarn with tape on the end to practice sewing.

Matching:
Click here and go to the animal matching activity.

Sorting:
Click here for the flower activity which has children sort by color and size.

Many of you have children will are getting ready for Kindergarten in the fall. Listed below are some skills that children will be working on during the first quarter of the new school year:

• Identifying words that rhyme
• Matching words that begin with the same sound (ball and bat)
• Saying the sound of the initial letter in the word
• Identifying the “first” and “last” letters in their name as well as identifying capital and lower case letters
• Pointing to each individual word in a sentence and counting the number of words (The dog can run) 4
• Sorting objects by shape, size and color
• Identifying and completing AB patterns (heart, square, heart, square)
• Putting objects in order from longest to shortest
• Understanding the concepts of many, few, none, more, fewer, same and different
• Identifying which group of objects has “one more than” or “one less than”
• Counting objects up to 10 using one-to-one correspondence (pointing to one object at a time)
• Representing numbers with the correct number of objects