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| By Samantha Segars, MFT Director of Merced Program |
Got skills?
The Basics
The real skills teachers look for are social skills, but academic standards are still important. It's great if your child can already recognize most letters by sight, can count to 10, identify numbers 1 to 5, and know some shapes and colors. But teachers want to see your child's ability to get along with other children and their readiness to learn.
Teachers also want to see gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and language skills. Gross motor skills include the ability to walk, run, and climb. Fine motor skill include the ability to hold pencils, crayons, and scissors — fine-motor tasks that kids will use every day in school. Language skills include the ability to hold a conversation and have a good foundation of vocabulary. But the real focus today is on social skills.
Ready to Learn:
Exploration
Does your child love to learn, to explore and discover new things, ask endless questions and continue working on a task until it’s done? Encourage your children by helping them explore the world and answering all those questions. Take them places such as zoos, museums and parks, where they can use their exploration skills. Show your child how things work. Encourage them to ask questions. How you handle your child’s natural curiosity will help them build the necessary skills to start school and enjoy a lifetime of learning.
Listening
Do you read to your child? Can your child listen and really pay attention when you read to them? Can he or she answer questions about the story? Reading to your child helps them to develop attention skills that they’ll need in school. It also helps build their vocabulary and hear the differences between sounds. Try to read to your child every day for 20 minutes. Limit the time they watch TV or play on the computer.
Attention skills are especially important in understanding rules, listening and following directions. Develop simple rules for your home and provide consistent consequences.
Independence
Children have to be able to help themselves get dressed, go to the bathroom, wash their hands and eat independently. When your child says, “I wanna do it,” let them instead of doing it for them. This takes patience, but it’s well worth it when you see them doing these things on their own. Praise your child for their independence and mastery of these skills.
Be an Individual
Help your child develop their self-concept and express their needs, wants and feelings.
Plays Well With Others:
Whether or not your child has the above skills, your child will need to develop certain social skills in order to succeed in school and in the social world. From the start, help your child learn the skills of sharing, compromising, taking turns, and problem-solving.
Sharing
Children naturally think they are the center of the world. They don’t want to and aren’t able to share very well. With your help, they can learn to share and appropriately express their feelings about sharing.
Encourage your child to practice good manners and be a role model for sharing. When playing with your kids, have them ask for things with, “May I have that?” Share what you’re playing with. Talk about how good it is to share. When they start to share, praise them. Talk to them about how hard it is to share their things, but how good it is to share anyway. Encourage taking turns and respecting others’ things. Give them experience in groups to encourage cooperative play in groups.
Problem-Solving
Children who play together will have conflicts. How you teach them to handle it will have lasting effects on how they get along with others. Be a role model for appropriately handling conflict in your relationships. If you see your child involved in a power struggle over a toy with a peer, help them figure out a solution. Encourage them to see the other person’s perspective and acknowledge their feelings. Developing negotiation and compromise skills and empathy in your child will help them succeed and get along well with other peers and adults. Expect your child to express their frustration and anger appropriately without over-reacting or hurting others.
Help your child follow through with a project and be creative in solving problems of all kinds.
What if my child needs special help to be ready for kindergarten?
If you find you are concerned that your child is not learning the basic academic skills and may need some extra help, call your local school district office to find out about screening or services for children who have special needs.
The best thing you can do to help ensure your child is ready for school is to make learning a fun and exciting part of every day. This will help your child be ready for Kindergarten whenever you decide to send them. It will also help them to have a lifetime of success in school.
