It's never too early to start preparing your child for kindergarten. As a librarian, I am absolutely going to stress the importance of taking your child to the library and promoting the value of literacy. As a parent, I can see what a difference this has made on my own children as they prepare to enter preschool and kindergarten. Libraries are awesome, filled with all kinds of materials to not only teach and educate parents and children alike but also to encourage and inspire imagination. Children's library staff are there to encourage and support families. Best of all, libraries are FREE!
I am currently in the middle of a five week Operation Kindergarten series that I am leading for children ages 3 1/2 to 5 and their caregivers. It's based on program in a box materials available through my library system as well as on information that I have gathered from a variety of educational websites as well as from the awesome brain of my mom. She has been an early childhood educator for years and has taught me so much. Her insight is invaluable to me. While I've led kindergarten readiness programs before, this year it's a little more personal since I have a daughter going in to kindergarten, This has been a chance for me to witness firsthand how everything comes together and shapes a child for this monumental milestone. (Insert tears here because I cannot believe she is going into kindergarten!!!!)
My program is designed to introduce some basic concepts in areas that kids will be exposed to both before and during kindergarten and beyond. I found an awesome website http://www.readyatfive.org/ that broke things down into curriculum content areas that helped me come up with the breakdown for each week. This site is an absolute gold mine! So much great information can be found here.
Week 1: Social Emotional Development
Week 2: Science
Week 3: Math
Week 4: English Language Arts/Literacy & Social Studies (These actually go hand in hand very well because there is a lot of opportunity for kids to talk about the world around them and develop their narrative skills. Creating a map of their town also promotes writing which is so important.)
Week 5: Physical Health & The Arts (I think these go together as well because so much of it is about taking care of your body and exercising while also learning how to use their bodies to do different things such as singing, acting, dancing, etc.)
Library storytimes are also a great way to begin preparing children for school. In storytime we introduce the six skills of early literacy: print motivation, print awareness, phonological skills, narrative skills, letter knowledge, and vocabulary. We also talk about how these six skills can be learned through simple, every day activities of singing, reading, writing, talking, and playing. In future posts, I will explore the six skills and provide examples of activities that you can do to promote the five activities.
In the meantime, I want to share some websites that provide some information for how you can begin school readiness at home. Don't forget your local library is also there to help!
https://www.worthingtonlibraries.org/borrow/lists
http://www.getreadytoread.org/early-learning-childhood-basics/early-literacy
http://www.earlylit.net/ecrtr/
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