This post is brought to you by Helping Your Child Get Ready To Start Kindergarten: Putting it into Perspective
This fall, many children will be starting school for the first time. What an important beginning for kids! And this is a significant time for grownups too. Did you know that children who start school in 2014 will finish high school in 2027? Sounds far into the future doesn’t it? But the support you give your child now will impact the future even farther than that. As a kindergarten teacher, I have been there and done that for the school start of over one thousand kids and their families. As many ‘why’ questions as kids ask, parents have ‘what’ questions. This is the introduction to a series of posts to help you answer the question: How do I help my child get ready for kindergarten?
First, here’s some perspective on kindergarten. Even if children have already been going to daycare and preschool, kindergarten can be a big change. For one thing, the numbers are different. There is often only 1 adult for all the children, and there are many more children than before. Childcare facilities are often in buildings by themselves while kindergartens are in schools with several grades and sometimes hundreds of children. There is a far greater degree of independence, self-confidence, and self-reliance needed for kindergarten.
School expands children’s lives, and the kindergarten year is the transition between the fairly contained world of home and the
new dimension of school. Sometimes, these can be quite different. For the next decade or more, kids will play and work for a huge chunk of their day at school, separate from family. No wonder many schools have a “Sip and Sob” time set up for the parents when kids start kindergarten. I was lucky that my kids spent their first few years at school where I was teaching, although they didn’t always think so.
Each day on the blog, I try and include a play-of-the-day. For today, as you and your child get ready for something, such as going to the store or playground, think of the steps for getting ready. How many are there? Are they quick and easy or not? Talk about getting ready and, if appropriate, maybe mix up some of the steps. How does that play out?