What Does Your Child's Kindergarten Teacher Want Parents to Know?

Your child̵7;s kindergarten teacher shares relevant information with parents throughout the school year, but parents do not have to wait to learn suggestions for helping children achieve success. Parents help to prepare their child for a structured educational setting by supporting reading readiness, positive social skills, play opportunities and self-help skills. Kindergarten teachers would like parents to continue the positive practices implemented in the home after the onset of the kindergarten school year.

  1. Continue to Play

    • Continue to create and support play opportunities at home. Your child̵7;s kindergarten teacher recognizes that play activities offer unique learning windows, and incorporates play opportunities into the kindergarten curriculum. Optimize your child̵7;s play experiences by supporting play themes with relevant books, encouraging her to act out roles from daily experiences and providing a variety of props. Through pretend or dramatic play, your child develops self-regulation of emotions, problem-solving ability and social skills that help to foster success in a kindergarten setting, reports Scholastic.

    Build Your Child's Reading Readiness Skills

    • Phonological awareness skills include identifying rhyming words, blending sounds and recognizing sound units in words. This awareness increases the likelihood that your child will learn to read easily, according to the National Association of School Psychologists. Increase your child̵7;s phonological awareness by reading together more than once a day, and provide opportunities to practice recognizing rhyming, beginning and ending sounds in words from the story. Invite your child to clap to the rhythm of her favorite nursery rhymes and songs.

    Emphasize Positive Social Skills

    • Help your child build positive social skills such as empathy, taking turns and sharing. Your child will continue to practice these skills in kindergarten, but needs parental support to maintain and grow emerging social skills. Good social skills function to boost your child̵7;s self-confidence and improve school performance, according to the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Observe your child̵7;s interactions with others, and praise socially appropriate behavior with enthusiasm. Don̵7;t forget to model positive responses to anger and frustration for your child.

    Applaud Self-Help Skills

    • Praise your child̵7;s current repertoire of self-help skills, and build new ones to foster kindergarten readiness, suggests the American Academy of Pediatrics. Parents may find it tempting to complete some of these tasks for their child to save time or demonstrate love, but self-help skills promote school success. Applaud your child̵7;s efforts to use the bathroom independently, fasten and unfasten buttons and snaps, put on and remove a coat, wash and dry hands, and use zippers.

    2. Previous:

    Next:

    • Planning for a Field Trip
      IdentifyingPlanning for a Field Trip Give and take is part of the homeschool life. Although you will no doubt participate in field trips that other people organize and run, you should also be prepared to plan field trips in which others can participa
    • Activities for Short Vowel Sounds
      Beginning readers learn common consonant sounds and then progress to understanding short vowel sounds. The short vowel sounds often occur in the middle of simple words such as dog and run. Short vowel knowledge begins with discrimination of same and
    • Homeschool-Friendly Reward Programs
      Homeschooling can be a fulfilling and gratifying experience, but it can also be difficult at times to keep your kids on track. One way you can keep your kids attention focused, so that their school work and projects gets done, is by instituting a rew