Kindergarten Readiness

Required Skills

• Tell their name, address, and telephone number.
• Tell their parents' names.
• Know the way to get to school and the way to get home.
• Travel alone in the immediate neighborhood - to the store, to the playground, to a friend's.
• Accomplish simple jobs at home - shutting the door, getting a cup, putting toys away.
• Care for themselves at toilet without help.
• Wash their own face and hands.
• Take their sweater or jacket off and put it back on, even if it's inside out.
• Take their shoes off and put them on by themselves (buy easy fastening kind).
• Use buttons or zippers without help (buy simple fastening clothing).
• Play reasonably well with other children of the same age - without excessive crying, fighting or teasing.
• Make their wants known in short, easy sentences (as opposed to pointing or crying.)
• Listen quietly while being read a short story or a poem.

Optional Skills

• Recognize their own printed name.
• Tell their right from their left.
• Tie their own shoes.
• Use crayons and chalk.
• Fill in outlined figures reasonably well (without excessive scribbling).
• Cut with blunt scissors.
• Match simple colors.
• Recognize basic colors: red, orange, yellow, blue, green, brown, black.
• Describe simple dimensions: big or little, tall or short, fat or thin.
• Describe simple quantities: one or two, a few or a lot, some or all.
• Identify simple shapes: circles, squares, triangles.
• Draw or copy a square.
• Fitn blocks and toys together.
• Understand and use simple spatial concepts: up, down, in, out, behind, under.

Your Child in School by Tom and Harriet Sobol