6 Things Your Child Needs to Know Before Kindergarten

While Alabama does offer the First Class Pre-K program, not every family that applies is accepted. Landing on the waiting list means that a foundational part of children’s education falls to families who often aren’t sure what schools expect their children to know before they enter kindergarten. 

As a former kindergarten teacher and current tutor for pre-K through third-grade students, I’m here to help you prepare your child for kindergarten. Based on my experience, here are the six skills and pieces of knowledge that your child needs.  If your child starts in the fall of 2023, here’s your guidebook to getting them kindergarten ready. 

1. Identifying their name when it is spoken and written prepares your child for social interactions with teachers and classmates. When a teacher says your child’s full name for roll call, attendance, or answering a question, they should recognize it. Your child should also be able to identify their name when it is written on cubbies, desks, materials, or other essential items in the classroom. If your child has gone by a nickname for most of their life, you should remind them that at school, teachers will call them by their full name.

2. Counting from 0-10 and associating numbers with quantities are precursors to kindergarten math. Your child should also understand one-to-one correspondence and number cardinality (the idea that the last number counted represents the total number of objects in a set). To teach these skills, the next time your child counts a group of objects, make sure that they touch and count each object to establish one-to-one correspondence. Then ask them to write the last number they counted, and to write that number. 

3. Knowing what the alphabet is, how to recite it, and some basic letter and sound recognition is really helpful. Your child may not know all 26 letters of the alphabet and what sounds they make before, but early in kindergarten, they will begin sounding out simple words or recognizing sight words. A solid understanding of the alphabet will help them build new skills at a faster pace. Check out this video for reference.  

4. Holding and using a pencil doesn’t mean they have to hold it a specific way, but they should have progressed beyond wrapping their entire fist around the pencil. If your child hasn’t chosen a dominant hand yet or struggles with fine motor skills, golf pencils are a great start for children’s small hands.

5. Identifying and communicating their emotional state will help support your child in challenging moments that may occur. The transition to kindergarten can be hard, especially for students who didn’t attend preschool and therefore aren’t used to being away from their parents. Being able to say when they feel happy, lonely, sad or frustrated will make it easier for teachers to help them learn from those challenging moments.

6. Playing goes beyond knowing the rules of games to having basic social skills such as: 

• • sharing;
  • following directions; and
  • taking turns.

The six skills are essential for your child’s academic and social growth, but you don’t have to teach them alone. At-home early education programs like WaterfordUpstart.org can provide guidance at no cost, and without a massive time commitment. Your child spends 15 minutes a day online, and the rest of the learning comes from daily interactions like asking your child to spot things that begin with D, if they’ve just learned that letter.

It does require dedication, but based on my time in the classroom, I can assure you that, as hard as you work to get your child ready for kindergarten, their teachers will work just as hard every day to help them learn and thrive in their new school. 

Keairra Chaney is a senior implementation specialist at Waterford.org. She spent six years teaching kindergarten, including working as a lead kindergarten teacher, a team lead, and school representative for mindset skills. 

Families can apply for Waterford Upstart right now by going to Waterford.org/upstart.  Families needing a computer or internet access will have that provided at no cost. Registration takes about 20 minutes.