A preschool child takes his or her signals from people around them, and most of the times that is mom and dad. In almost every situation, the child watches you to see if this is a good time to laugh, to cry, to pray, to be serious or to be afraid. Just watch your little one when you are out in an unfamiliar situation. Her little eyes will be glued to you and when you react a certain way, she will immediately react that way too.
So the influence you have on your child’s attitude about her first year at school will be driven to a very large extent by your attitude. If you are nervous or anxious about this big step, your child will go into the first days in kindergarten tense and serious too. Continue reading ‘Making Kindergarten Fun’
As your child gets ready to go out in the world, maybe for the first time when you send her off to kindergarten, one of the top concerns any worried mom or dad has will be about security. And while most schools are run by qualified education professionals and campuses are secured, it might give you a greater sense of security if you were able to “arm” your child with a cell phone “just in case.”
Of course that desire to let your little boy or girl carry his or her own cell phone to kindergarten may be more related to moms insecurity about being out of touch with the child for several hours. If you know she has a phone on her and knows how to use it, at least you know she can reach you if she needs to hear your voice and that you can reach her if you need to know your baby is doing ok especially in those first days and weeks at kindergarten.
Continue reading ‘Kindergartners With Cell Phones’
There are certain big events in everyone’s life that we take the time to really celebrate and even get others involved so create spectacle and ceremony for the commemoration of that event. Marriages and funerals are perfect examples of huge life events that are so important in the life of those involved and in the life of the family and the community that we even get the church involved to place their blessing on the event.
Days like this almost always mark a transition from one phase of life to the next phase. Graduations from high school or college are celebrated with great joy because they take a young person into the next big step of maturity and responsibility. The celebration and the spectacle that we build around these big events help the one going through the transition make that jump and start this new exciting phase of life with enthusiasm and the blessing of the ones that love them.
Continue reading ‘It’s a Day Worth Remembering’
When we think of going into the “preparation mode” as that first day of kindergarten approaches, the two areas we most focus on are the academic and the emotional. If your little one has conquered shapes, colors, counting and basic vocabulary, these are some of the academic skills that she should have as she heads off for that first day of formal school. You may have given her some home school or even preschool exposure to get those skills in place and all of that was good preparation for this big day.
From an emotional and social point of view, the big change from staying home with mom every day to being in an institutionalized setting is one that your child will cope with better with some preparation. So letting her meet the teacher, the other students, sit in on one day with you there and then have time to role play or talk through what it will be like all will be very helpful at reducing that feeling of disorientation that your kiddo may experience the first day at school. Continue reading ‘Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten?’
Preparations for Kindergarten can get pretty involved. They would include making sure your child has the right clothes, looking into the right schools for your little one and helping the teacher have all the school supplies she needs. But preparing your child emotionally to set out on this big adventure is one of the biggest challenges of preparing for kindergarten.
Actually, the task of making sure your little one goes off to have a great first day at school experience doesn’t start with the child. It starts with you. Children take their clues from mom and dad. And very often it is mom who is on the front lines of this first step of guiding her baby through the many twists and turns of public education. And as much as a child might experience some nervousness and anxiety about the big change that is coming, mom may be the one that feels anxious about this next big step in the life of her child.
Continue reading ‘Don’t Sweat Out Kindergarten’
For many moms the idea of driving up to a big scary elementary school and dropping off their child for kindergarten can be pretty frightening. And in preparing for kindergarten, getting your child ready for that moment of separation can be one of the most difficult things to do. That is why a great option for a lot of moms is not to completely separate from the child in their first weeks of kindergarten but to be an active parent and get involved volunteering at the school even in the summer before kindergarten gets underway.
Kindergarten teachers are notoriously under funded and often depend heavily on the help of parents both to get ready for the school year and during the year to serve as “classroom moms” to help out with children who need to go to the bathroom, who get sick or to coordinate activities in the classroom and during field trips. If you take the initiative toward the end of the school year before your little one goes to kindergarten and meet the teacher who will be your child’s first teacher in life, that teacher will love meeting you and your child too and getting a head start on making friends with her.
Continue reading ‘Doing Your Part in the Classroom’
Getting prepared for any big new event is all about eliminating the element of surprise. That is why soldiers go to boot camp, why athletes practice for months before competition and why actors rehearse nonstop before show day. And it’s what drives parents like you and me to start months, maybe years before your child goes to kindergarten to remove any element of surprise in what will happen that day and so you know your child is prepared in every possible way for that day she walks into kindergarten.
Some of the aspects of that first day are easy to get ready for. You know your child will need new clothes and probably more clothes because he or she will be at school every day. You don’t want your offspring to be embarrassed by having to wear too many older items. So you might buy them the fashionable kindergartner things so that first day is one of fitting in and looking just like the other kids.
Continue reading ‘Day One of Kindergarten and No Surprises’
Going to kindergarten in this new age is a lot different than it was when we were children. Modern children are more aware of the adult world, more sophisticated and certainly more aware of technology and the internet than was imaginable even a few years ago when that youngster was a newborn. So we have to take that into consideration when we begin to prepare a child for kindergarten because there is really no level of schooling that is untouched by computers and technology.
The first step for finding out how much your child needs to know about computers and the internet day one in kindergarten is to visit the school and talk to the teacher. It really isn’t a matter of kids being forced to learn about cyberspace. Schools are simply using the internet for teaching because kids are showing up already knowing all about it. As you look around any modern kindergarten class, you will see dozens of computer kiosks so the kids can connect to the internet and use the internet for anything from research to communications to learning games to exploring the galaxies.
Continue reading ‘Computers for Kids’
One of the things about a child going to kindergarten that is so new is the feeling of being apart from mom and dad for the first time. For most infants, one of the things they can count on the most is being able to be with mom or dad, all the time. It’s one of those constants that gives a young child that sense of stability and safety from which she can explore the world.
So when that moment comes when the child will be going off to kindergarten, it might be the first time that your child will be away from you for any significant period of time. And that can cause anxiety for the child as well as for mom and dad. But there are things you can do to prepare for that moment of separation so the shock isn’t so sudden and so the child can acclimate to the new world of public school.
The key to reducing the anxiety of that big move to kindergarten is to “test drive” separations from mom and dad in the year or so before kindergarten. Now, it’s fairly normal for a child to be with a babysitter for an evening. Often this is grandma or the child spends the evening with other relatives with whom there is already a fair amount of comfort and security. But you might think about making these kinds of separations more frequent to where the child knows he or she will be away from mom an evening each week indefinitely.
Continue reading ‘A Little Separation is a Good Thing’
A preschool child takes his or her signals from people around them, and most of the times that is mom and dad. In almost every situation, the child watches you to see if this is a good time to laugh, to cry, to pray, to be serious or to be afraid. Just watch your little one when you are out in an unfamiliar situation. Her little eyes will be glued to you and when you react a certain way, she will immediately react that way too.
