EDUCATION: Prepare Yourself — Kindergarten is the New First Grade

November 15th, 2007 · No Comments

Cindy Mann, Educational Consultant and Children’s Author

– Cindy Mann, children’s author & Kindergarten teacher

Today’s Kindergarten is definitely not what it used to be. Actually, it’s First Grade. California State Standards mandate that all children, upon leaving Kindergarten, will have mastered:

Recognition of upper and lower case letters
Beginning and ending sounds of all consonants and short vowel sounds
Instant recognition of 35 sight words
Number recognition to 30
Basic addition and subtraction

Bottom Line: What used to be fingerpainting and nursery rhymes has evolved. Your child is expected to be reading and adding and subtracting before First Grade even begins. Right or wrong or in between, that’s the way it is.

What can you do to prepare a child for the potential pressure-cooker that is today’s Kindergarten class?

Play Together
Build with blocks and Tinkertoys and Legos; blow bubbles; play checkers; splash in puddles and schmoosh in the mud…TOGETHER.

Read Together
Every day. Ask questions like “What do you think will happen next” (and listen to the answers before reading on). Point out letters and sound out words. Make sure your child knows what question marks, and exclamation points and periods and the spaces between words are. MAKE READING TIME A SPECIAL TIME.

Play the Numbers Game
Count. Count. Count. Count everything – red cars, people with hats, forks, cans of pet food doors/windows in a building. Point out numbers on houses, on signs, in menus, in catalogs…EVERYWHERE.

Rev up the Small Motor Skills
Play with Play Dough, cut out shapes (with children’s scissors), create pictures with crayons and colored pencils, work on 25-50-piece puzzles.
CREATE.

Accelerate the Large Motor Skills
Play catch, bounce balls, hop & skip & jump and slide and climb and run together. HAVE FUN.

Simple advice, I know. The trick is making time to actually do all these things with your child — consistently and conscientiously. Most important:
turn off the TV. Turn off the Computers. Turn off your Cell-Phone. Put away the Play Station, X-Box, etc. Take the time to truly be with your child. Take time to listen — to the ideas, the thoughts, the concerns, the hopes, the dreams — and you’ll make it through Kindergarten, too.

Cindy Mann is a children’s author, educational consultant and veteran Kindergarten teacher in the Las Virgenes School District, CA.

She can be reached via email at runitoff@aol.com.

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