There are a number of things you, as an adult, can do to help your child become even more successful during his/her Kindergarten year. As you complete them, keep in mind that practice makes perfect and that just because you think your child “gets it” it doesn’t mean your child “got it!” Be patient.
- Teach your child how to clean him/herself after using the toilet ☺ (this is CRITICAL!
- Teach the name of each piece of clothing: sock, shirt, pants, sweater, vest, jacket
- Teach the name of the body parts: nose, mouth, neck, head, arm, leg, knee, ankle, belly button, thigh, etc.
- Teach your child how to button his/her own clothes
- Being able to say his/her phone number out loud is a safety skill
- The importance to flush the toilet and hand washing after using the bathroom for hygiene
- Saying “thank you” and “please” is using good manners and being courteous
- Being able to recognize first as well as last name in print
- Begin teaching how to tie his/her own shoelaces (this is a very difficult skill!)
- Say a word and ask what sound he/she hears at the beginning (i.e. dog—What sound is at the beginning of dog? /d/)
- Recognizing and identifying the numbers 0 to 30. Find numbers in the neighborhood and ask your child to tell you what they are (look at the house numbers, street signs, etc.)
- Recognizing geometric shapes of things (circle, square, rectangle, triangle, oval, hexagon, sphere, cube, cylinder) in the world around us (i.e. point to a tire and ask, “What shape is that?” –circle)
- Recognizing rhyming words (cat, hat, fat, sat) and being able to come up with another rhyming word—this is a difficult concept so practice this skill often
- Recognizing the letters of the alphabet: find them in the neighborhood and point to them and ask your child to tell you what they are (Point to the letters in a street sign)
- Recognizing the lower-case letters of the alphabet out of order
- Say a word and ask what sound he/she hears at the end. (i.e. bug. What sound is at the end of bug? /g/)
- Find examples of things that come in number combinations (five: five fingers on a hand, two: two chopsticks, four: four plates on a baseball field)
- Sorting objects and matching up pairs (i.e. have your child match up all the shoes in your closet, find all the matching socks when doing the laundry)
- Being able to tell right from left (directionality)—on our class computer, we use the left button on the mouse and not the right button when we play the games ☺
- Say a word and ask what vowel sound he/she hears middle. (i.e. hat. What vowel sound is in the middle of hat? /a/)
