Kindergarten Readiness: A Discussion Series
Common Ground has been around 49 years.
In that time, we have made some incredible discoveries about how children learn and thrive.
Having a curriculum dedicated to kindergarten-readiness for our 3 yr and 4 yr class rooms has proven to be essential to a child’s comfort, confidence, and comprehension in their kindergarten classroom.
Disclaimer: This does not mean we want your three year old sitting at a desk all the time!
We actually want the opposite of that! We have talked about how essential big body activities and play-based learning are to a child’s holistic development. We have discussed the need for peers to really create a learning space rife with new ideas and curiosity.
As a parent AND a teacher, I covered my initial concerns for children not in kindergarten readiness programs HERE. I especially touched on children who were not in any kind of program during the Covid-19 social distancing effort.
Having a daily schedule in a classroom completely dedicated to their exploration with peers who provide endless inspiration is key to a learning spirit. We want to share our experiences, our research, and our findings with you by taking a deeper dive into how a two year kindergarten readiness program benefits:
Natural number sense — an awareness that mathematics is present in all things
Scientific process — independent search for answers to their questions
Emotional regulation and social confidence
Physical fitness and general endurance
Attention, comprehension, and participation
Learning as a PROCESS over a destination
Prewriting and Imaginative Independence — We discussed at length how Emergent Writing is nurtured from ages 3-5 HERE, but will touch on it as we discuss other aspects of a child’s growth and development
We will be discussing Rising Kindergarteners and our Private Kindergarten on February 9th, but we encourage anyone with a child who will be 3 by September 30th, 2021 to enroll them in a readiness program. Follow our journey, ask questions, and do your research! We will also provide further reading on the subjects at the end of each post and discussion.
We are constantly learning and growing as well! As teachers, we love learning almost as much as we love your kids, and want to nurture them with you. Let’s do this together!
Warmest Regards,
Ms. LJ
Teacher Tips: Emergent Writers Need Peer Input
After my previous post about kindergarten readiness and those three and four year olds who experienced the Covid-19 quarantine, I started doing more research. I wanted to see if there were any concerns from experts on how key aspects of a preschool curriculum could be implemented at home effectively.
Serendipitously, Office for Children was offering a class for teachers on how to provide ideal environment and instruction for emergent writers! I signed up immediately. As a teacher and a parent, it seemed like an essential course for me to provide my students (and kids!) as much support as I could.
Here are some key aspects of the class that can be implemented both at home and in the classroom!
The educators discussed the writing environment extensively.
Have many items labeled as possible to help children begin to associate symbolic words with tangible objects. It is even better if you can provide a picture. A child begins to recognize the connection between pictures and real items first, which helps them practice that symbolic association. A trash can label would look something like this.
Have several different types of writing implements, paying attention to how easy they are to grasp and the pressure that needs to be used. For instance, a marker is a much easier implement to use than a crayon because it is larger and requires less force to create with.
Book making is fun, creative, and gives a child purpose. Have book making supplies readily on hand, and keep them so that your child knows what they have created is valuable! Here are instructions for making a fun book with a stick for a spine and other found materials!
READ TO THEM. Have books all around. Change them up so that the books don’t just blend into the environment. Show the kiddos all different kinds of authors so they can begin to recognize different styles! This helps them understand that people can communicate and use words differently, and they can begin to develop their own taste. Try to always read the words as they are written so that children understand you’re not just making up what you’re saying, that the words themselves have a consistent meaning.
Put pictures of animals, plants, stars, favorite characters, around on the walls. Kids will look at these and be inspired to write on subjects they may not have thought of before! If they copy stories they’ve seen or read before, good!
DRAWING IS EXCELLENT FOR EMERGENT WRITING! Drawing means they are working to produce their own pictures and symbols to convey meaning. Writing the words they are saying and spelling them out carefully will help them see how the letters and words relate to their thoughts! KEEP IN MIND that you should also encourage the children to add more detail to their pictures before relying too heavily on the words you add. This will help them work to convey meaning instead of letting you do it.
ENTHUSIASM. IS. KEY. Their enthusiasm will carry them through the practice, will encourage them to continue their process even when it’s frustrating. YOUR enthusiasm will encourage them and help them fly forward without fear of failure! Ask them leading questions like “Oh Wow! What happens next? How does it end?” This not only helps them with story sequencing, but it lets them know that wherever they are in the process, you are happy to be there sharing their story.
TREAT THEIR WORK WITH DIGNITY. I’m not saying you have to keep every drawing or scrap of paper with art on it. I am saying to be consistent with # 7, keep ongoing projects in the same place so that they can return, encourage them to move forward in their studies rather than critiquing WHERE they are in the process.
9. Peer Interaction during the process of emergent writing is key.
There are a lot of processes you can do at home that are helpful and important. But research has shown that other children thrive in an environment when they can watch how their peers practice drawing and writing. They copy each other. They observe different style interpretations. They listen as their teachers give different instructions to their friends. When I was teaching in the four year old classroom, I was blown away by how one child drawing volcanoes transformed into the entire class drawing volcanoes. They told different stories, they extrapolated off of each other’s ideas, they asked big questions that spun off into entire lessons. They were fascinated, excited to draw in their journals and tell me THEIR version of the volcano story. Someone would add a princess, someone would add a PAW PATROL pup, and then another kid would do the same thing the next day, inspired by their friends. Even in COVID times when the numbers are low, even if they have to sit apart at their own desks with their own implements, children that can be around their peers while they practice show greater strides in all aspects of writing, story telling, and literary comprehension.
Educators are encouraged to call their children “authors” and let them “read” stories to their friends. Letting them sit in an “author’s chair” is even better. Even if they’re just reciting a memorized passage, or making up words for their pictures, they have autonomy over the story they are telling. This inspires other children to want to build their story to share.
One of my favorite things to do with my students is to come up with a premise and allow the students to write the story with me. They can introduce characters to the story, provide what happens “next,” I’ve even had my older students come up with lines for rhyming words that match the story! They riff off of each other and begin to understand the structure and sequencing of a story while having fun together. Afterwards they draw the pictures for each page. We put together the book and each child can stand up and read THEIR page in the book we all created together.
Experiences like the those described above show how essential and enriching peers are to the writing learning process. Wonder, creativity, practice, immersion, these are the building blocks to writing success, but all of those things are SUPER CHARGED with friends at your side.
Questions? Comments? Experiences to Share? Please comment below! We love to share our world with you.
Ms. LJ
Concerned Parent -- Kindergarten Readiness
My daughter is a “young five.” This means that she just made the cut off for Kindergarten the year she turned five. While she is quite precocious and has a great love of learning, I was hesitant to put her into kindergarten simply because being socially and emotionally confident is just as important as being intellectually ready. Fortunately, I have had her in the incredible preschool program at Common Ground Childcare. Their play-based learning style and patient, nurturing teachers helped her really blossom into the confident student she is.
Unfortunately, she turned five during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I am a teacher, too. I have taught four and five year olds, and I know just how much these littles can change in a season. I had quite a few “young fives” in my classroom that I would have advised holding back if asked in March, only to see them blossom by summer.
Our little fours and fives of 2020 didn’t have that essential March to June nurturing period to hone their pre-kindergarten skills. They did not have the summer to tumble and play with their peers so that they would be resilient and self-assured come September. They are “young” in their classes, and it shows.
Fortunately, with the arrival of the Covid-19 vaccine we are going to be seeing a new, more familiar “normal.” The one, two, and young three year olds will likely not even feel that “pause” on their lives.
BUT…
I am so worried about the three and four year olds of 2020. What essential life lessons are they missing out on? My students absorb so much during these years, more than they ever will again, I just wonder how long it will take to catch up on those key childhood skills, especially because it is likely that kindergarteners will still be in a hybrid class system September 2021. This usually fun, joyous experience is now so disjointed and uncertain.
Resourceful parents have turned to online worksheets and apps to help catch up on pre-literacy and early number-sense exercises. There are a lot of inventive games and learning programs that do have an overall positive SUPPLEMENTAL effect on a children’s education. They are not meant to do the heavy lifting on a child’s education.
Even without COVID-19 ravaging our normal schedules, 1 in 12 kids are as fit as the average child 35 years ago. Attention spans are suffering under a sedentary education style. Sensory training, emotional regulation, physical stability, these are as key to learning as letters and numbers, and much harder to master after age 5. There is no substitute for peer to peer social training and whole body lessons with trained childcare professionals.
If any of you out there have kids that will be kindergarteners in 2021 that aren’t in a dedicated program with their peers, I would strongly advise you to consider a rising kindergarten program.
There are excellent classes around, like the Honeybees Program at Common Ground Childcare, that strictly follow Health Department regulations to protect their teachers and children from the pandemic, while still letting the kids be kids. Common Ground teachers are also preparing for that “new normal” by helping their students learn appropriate mask-discipline and basic tech usage for when they have to distance-learn.
I think it is essential that all kids have a safe preschool experience that helps them be confident and kindergarten-ready. If a child really is not ready for kindergarten, there is nothing wrong with holding them back! But even if you decide to keep them out of grade school for another year, I would still keep them in a play-based curriculum in their peers. They will go into kindergarten as a much stronger, confident kid.
-Miss LJ