Our friends at ABCmouse.com recently wrote a guest post for the Mom’s Choice Matters blog that we also want to share here. Please enjoy this syndicated copy of this article, filled with information every mom of a pre-K student needs.
Are your children prepared for kindergarten?
How can you be sure?
Wondering about your child’s readiness for kindergarten is often top of mind for parents of preschoolers. Why? Because many children have different experiences leading up to grade school entrance. Some come from a more structured pre-school while others stayed at home with mom or dad (and may have or not have been home-schooled).
The real issue here though is what skills does your child need to be fully prepared for kindergarten?
ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy, an online curriculum designed to assist early learners to succeed in pre-k, kindergarten, and early elementary school programs, and a Mom’s Choice Award honoree, recently conducted a survey of 518 kindergarten teachers across the United States to gain insight into children’s preparedness for kindergarten. The survey also assessed what children should know, according to teachers. The research aims at providing parents with specific suggestions on how to better prepare young children for school during the critical developmental years from birth through age five.
The overall summary of the report found that, “America’s kindergarten teachers believe most young children (66%) are unprepared for school when they enter kindergarten, and veteran kindergarten teachers believe that this situation is deteriorating.”
When respondents were asked how well prepared academically children are when first enter the kindergarten classroom, 65.6 percent stated that children are “only somewhat prepared” or are “not at all prepared,” with 8.5 percent stating that children entering kindergarten are “not at all prepared.” Only 5.6 percent stated that children are “very well-prepared” academically.
Additional highlights from the report include:
- Less than nine percent of responding teachers describe the oral language skills of entering students as “very good.”
- Ninety-five percent (95%) agree that preschool attendance is, in fact, “beneficial” with most of those (75 percent of all respondents) saying it is “very beneficial.”
- Seventy-seven percent (77%) of teachers view technology as “very useful” or “useful.”
To combat these numbers, the survey asked teachers for recommendations regarding what parents should do to prepare children for entering kindergarten. Here are five to keep top of mind:
- Actively participate in your child’s education with pre-reading and reading activities, such as reading books together and practicing the alphabet.
- Expose children to new experiences and talk with them about those experiences in order to improve their ability to speak and understand oral language and increase vocabulary.
- Practice identifying numbers and counting with both verbal and written activities.
- Work with children to identify shapes, colors, and objects in the world around them.
- Place children in social settings with other young children so that they can learn together while they also develop manners and the ability to share and be respectful.
How did you prepare your child for kindergarten? Please share your stories and suggestions with the MCA community!
For more information and a detailed report from this survey, and more on what parents can do to better prepare their children for entering kindergarten, click here: Special Report to Parents: Preparing for Kindergarten.
Additional links:
National Kindergarten-Preparedness Survey Results
ABCmouse.com is a global education initiative of Age of Learning, Inc. Its goal is to help children build a strong foundation for future academic success by providing a comprehensive and engaging online curriculum to pre-k, kindergarten, and early elementary school programs. ABCmouse.com is a subscription-based website where children can learn and explore with their parents, or on their own (depending on age and ability), in a safe and secure online educational environment.