Kindergarten Readiness
For some children entering kindergarten it is their first experience in a school classroom, and for our Pre-K friends it’s an exciting new school year. This Countdown to Kindergarten section of this site provides tools and resources to help support your child to prepare and transition to kindergarten.
On the left-hand navigation bar, families can explore information and activities that support a child's development in key areas of kindergarten readiness.
Early Learning Skills
Literacy
Early Literacy Skills
Language and literacy development begin at birth and provide the foundation for a child’s success in school. It encompasses the skills related to listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Early literacy skills are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that come before conventional reading and writing.
Did you know that your child begins using early reading skills from the time they are born?
You may not know it, but when you talk, sing, read and play with your child, you are building important skills and teaching them to love books. The more stories you can read and tell your child, the better!The Nashville Public Library offers excellent resources and recommendations tailored to each grade level to support early literacy. Borrow some of these books from your local library branch or from your local bookstore.
No Matter What Book You Read to Your Child, Remember...
- Choose books that you and your child enjoy! If you start a book and decide it’s not for you, it’s OK to put it down and try a different one. Ask your local librarian or bookseller for books they recommend.
- Read with expression. Make sound effects, do different voices for characters—whatever makes it fun for you and your child!
- Make it interactive! Are there words or phrases that get repeated? Have your child join in.
- Read the pictures. Did you know you can read a book without ever reading the words? Look at the pictures and have your child tell you the story they see. You can help them out by asking questions like, “What’s happening here?” “What do you see?” or “What do you think will happen next?”
- Talk about the book. The story doesn’t have to end on the last page. What did you like? What didn’t you like? Can you connect what you read to your life?
Math
You can help your child build early math skills by talking about numbers and how we use them in everyday life. This will help your child develop basic problem-solving skills, understand patterns and sequences, and support early literacy. Counting everyday objects and finding patterns and shapes around them are important ways that children understand how to use early math.
Below are tips to support your child’s early math skills development:
Encourage Counting
- Ask children to count items in picture books: How many cats do you see? How many windows are there?
- Suggest children count real, everyday objects using one number for each item.
Sorting and Matching
- Ask children to match pictures of things that go together in storybooks: “Show me the picture of the bed for papa bear. Show me baby bear’s bed.”
- Ask children to help with simple household tasks such as sorting and matching socks.
Put Events in Order
- Talk about the fact that stories have a beginning, middle and end.
- Use words that help children understand the order in which things happen, such as “first” and “second.” “First, we need to wash our hands. Second, we will eat apples.”
Identify Simple Shapes
- Look for different shapes in your house and neighborhood: What shape are the windows? What shape are the plates?
- Help children point out circles, squares, and triangles in books.
Understand the Number Line
- Play board games like Candy Land or Hopscotch, in which children count the number of moves.
Suggested Books for Early Math Skills
- Ten, Nine, Eight
- Fast for Ten
- The Napping House
- My Granny Went to Market
- My Bus
- Big Fat Hen
- Shapes, Shapes, Shapes
- Anno's Counting Book
- Goldilocks and the Three Bears
STEM
From the moment a child is born, they are busy exploring the world and learning how things work; this is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) learning. Families and caregivers can support a child’s success in STEM learning in the early years, even if they don’t feel especially confident in science and math themselves.
The most important things we can do for our children to support STEM learning is to focus on the language we use in talking with our children, and provide and allow opportunities for children to investigate and explore (especially outside).
Below are activities that you can do with your child to support STEM learning at home:
Water Play
Water play helps your child learn important STEM skills. It is also great for helping develop fine-motor skills, social skills, and for engaging your child’s imagination.
- Allow your child the opportunity to play with water in many different settings. Fun opportunities include: bath time, using water in pretend kitchen play, etc.
- Provide different containers (e.g., cups, buckets, sieves/cups with holes, funnels, etc.) for your child to explore the water with.
- Add ice to allow children to explore the different temperatures and states of water (solid and liquid).
- Add common household or natural objects (e.g., rocks, nuts, leaves, corks, beads, etc.) for your child to explore buoyancy and what objects sink or float?
- Play outside. Not only does it help with the mess, but playing in the rain and in puddles is a science and sensory experience not to be missed.
Sand Play
Sand play is great for helping your child build fine and gross motor skills, improve social skills and support cognitive development. It also helps build STEM skills.
- Provide a variety of materials to play with in the sand (e.g., buckets, scoops, trucks, molds, etc.).
- Add water to allow your child to explore how the texture and properties of sand change when wet (plus it’s more fun to build with!).
- Try other materials such as rice or beans. These can be great options to bring play indoors when needed.
Shadow Play
Playing with shadows is a great way for children to explore objects that they can’t touch, which helps build cognitive skills such as the ability to question and inquire.
- Go outside and explore the shadows your body makes. Notice how the shadows move as you move. Discuss how they are made by something (you) standing in the way of the sun’s light.
- Play with shadow hand puppets by making fun shapes with your hands and a flashlight.
- Cut out shapes from paper to make shadow puppets to retell your favorite stories with or make up your own.
Block Play
Block play is a great way to support many skills in science (e.g., how gravity works, balance, interaction of forces, etc.), technology (e.g., use of items in different ways), engineering (e.g., use of items to solve problems, planning a construction, following a plan), and math (e.g., patterning, measurement, geometry, etc.). It also builds social, cognitive, and language skills.
- Provide a variety of sizes and shapes of blocks for exploration.
- Add tubes and ramps with balls, marbles, or toy cars to support exploration of force and motion.
- Add common household or natural objects (e.g., corks, paper towel tubes, cereal/food/shoe boxes, rocks, sticks and uneven blocks of wood, beads, etc.) to support problem solving and creativity.
- Encourage your child to draw their constructions after they build them.
- Have your child plan a construction project before building it. Encourage them to make adjustments to their plan or blueprint along the way if things don’t work out as planned.
Nature Play
Being outside is important for children’s physical and emotional health. It also supports the development of cognitive skills, social skills, and an understanding of basic STEM concepts.
- Keep a weather journal. Go outside every day and have your child draw the weather for that day in a journal. Have your child tell you what words to add to their pictures.
- Keep an observation journal (this can be added to the weather journal). Have your child draw pictures of what they see outside each day (e.g., plants, animals, objects in the sky, etc.). This can be a great way to look at change over time if your child observes some of the same items each day (e.g., leaves changing color, birds collecting material for nests, flowers budding, etc).
- Grow a plant. This can be in a big garden or a small flowerpot. Have your child choose the seed they want to grow and draw pictures of the plant’s growth daily. It can also be fun to sprout seeds against the sides of clear plastic cups to watch what is happening below the soil.
- Go on a nature scavenger hunt. Make a list of things you hope to see outside and keep track of them in a journal as you take a walk.
- Build a fort or other secret area for pretend play and storytelling.
- If you (or a neighbor, friend or family member) have a pet, talk to your child about what your pet needs to live (e.g., food, shelter, etc.). Involve your child in taking care of the pet, allowing them to help with tasks such as feeding and grooming.
Movement/Motor
Gross motor skills refer to the coordination of the large muscle groups in the body, which is important to the development of a young child. Those are the muscles that allow us to walk, run, hop, skip and throw a ball. Muscles are strengthened by use and practice.
Well-developed gross motor skills won’t only help your child physically; they will also help their brain to mature. Our brains rely on our bodies to receive information through our senses, and the more movement that our bodies make. Children are more spatially aware, and it even aids their ability to regulate their emotions.
Here are some activities to support the development of your child's gross motor skills:
Play with a ball
Roll a ball toward your child and let her kick it back to you. As your child progresses, they will be able to run toward the ball and kick it. This requires the use of both sides of your child’s body and their brain, which is also beneficial for learning skills. Catching a ball requires eye-hand coordination, and with practice, your child can learn to do it with ease.
March to bed:
This not only makes going to bed fun, but it also requires the use of large muscles. Also, when your child brushes their teeth before bed, brushing requires them to cross the midline of their body, which is beneficial for coordination and brain development.
Dance:
Move and clap in rhythm to music, which helps develop coordination and awareness of the body in relation to others.
Unstructured playtime at a local park or playground:
Swing, climb on the monkey bars, play chase. Let your child burn off some energy. They will be happier and sleep better!
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is the way children and adults learn to recognize and manage their emotions, learn to show care and concern for others, make friends and develop relationships with children and adults, and learn to solve problems and make responsible choices.
Children with strong SEL skills have the:
- Ability to develop good relationships with other children and adults by making friends and getting along with others
- Ability to identify, understand, and express their own feelings/emotions and the feelings/ emotions of others
- Ability to handle strong emotions, being able to calm down when angry
- Ability to stick to tasks
- Ability to listen and follow directions
- Ability to develop empathy toward others
- Social Emotional Learning provides lifelong skills that help children be successful in school and for a lifetime. Social-emotional skills build resiliency in children – the ability to face challenges and overcome adversity throughout life.
ACTIVITIES/TIPS TO SUPPORT SEL
Building a positive relationship with your child is one of the easiest ways to teach your child social-emotional skills. These activities encourage talking, laughing, taking turns, sharing and most importantly, an opportunity to hang out and have a fun time with your child:
- Reading a book together and talking about the characters
- Taking a walk
- Singing favorite songs together
- Eating dinner together
- Talking/singing in the car or bus
- Hugs, high fives, kisses, winks, thumbs-up
- Saying “I love you”
- Asking your child about his/her day
- Letting your child be your special helper (helping with dinner, laundry, etc.
- Playing together
- Encourage and compliment them when they are successful in doing a task
For additional resources, visit the National Center for Pyramid Innovations.