One of the best ways parents can prepare their child for kindergarten is to encourage independent skills over the summer months. Actually, many teachers are often more concerned about a child’s ability to take to care of themselves and relate to their friends than how many letters or numbers they know. Here are a few ideas for helping your child develop self help skills that are particularly helpful in the kindergarten classroom.
1. Cleaning Your Own Personal Space. Whether picking up toys before coming to large group or putting away markers and crayons at table time, taking care of and cleaning an area is an important self help skill. You can help your child practice this skill at home by having him/her put away items after they completed an activity. Little things like putting the cap on markers, the cap on glue sticks and throwing away paper cuttings will be helpful practice for the upcoming school year.
2. Opening and Closing the Backpack. After purchasing that treasured backpack practice opening and closing it. At the end of each day students are expected to gather their creations and place them in their backpack to go home. Even when purchasing that backpack, have your child try it out to see if he/she can maneuver the zipper.
3. Straws, milk containers and juice boxes. Whether you send your child to school with a lunch or purchase a lunch at school, your child is likely to have to open the packaging of both the straw and the container. Actually, getting that tiny straw from the wrapper and opening a milk container can be quite difficult for little hands. There are certainly adults in the cafeteria to help, but any practice with this skill will be helpful.
4. Laces, buttons, zippers and snaps! Many students enter kindergarten not quite knowing how to tie their shoes, but it is a skill that is learned around this age. In terms of teaching your child to tie shoes, be sure to check out the Teaching Shoe Tying- Tips and Tricks from Fun Therapy Zone. You can download this printable for free and there are step-by-step directions for creating your own shoe typing practice box.
permission to use photo granted by Fun Therapy Zone
Teaching your child zip his/her pants and securing the button or snap at the top of the pants after using the bathroom is super helpful.
5. Coats and Jackets. Living in Northern Michigan, having children learn to dress and undress themselves for the outdoors is critical. In the winter months getting ready to go outside in the snow is a daunting task. Just imagine 20 plus little ones putting on snow pants, coats, boots, hats and mittens. It certainly is an exercise in patience. As soon as our kiddos are able to dress and undress themselves the better. One of the greatest challenges is putting on a coat where the sleeves of the coat are turned inward. Helping your child know how to fix the sleeves can be so helpful.
6. Coughing and Nose Blowing. In the kindergarten classroom, germs abound! Teaching your child to cover his/her mouth when coughing will be helpful. We typically teach children to cough in the crease of their elbow. This way germs do not get on their hands. Then with nose blowing- knowing when to blow their nose and then taking care of the tissue are unique kindergarten challenges.
7. Bathroom Routines. Kindergarten can be so much fun that some children even forget to use the bathroom when needed or they wait for the very, very last second before dashing into the bathroom. Then they are so anxious to get to their activity that they forget the bathroom routine. Before leaving the bathroom, children should check the seat to be sure there isn’t any unwanted liquids (I’ll say it- pee) on the rim and then wipe the seat. Alright, you’ll probably think it’s a little crazy, but this is really a big challenge in school bathrooms. Then, of course, flush the toilet and wash their hands. Having visuals in your home which you can place in the bathroom could be helpful. You can download these visuals for FREE by clicking the link below.
Click the following link to download the FREE bathroom cue cards Bathroom Prompt Signs
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