Kindergarten is an exciting time for you and your child because it sets the stage for his entire school experience. Yet turning five-years-old is not a guarantee that a child is automatically ready to be a confident student. How can parents tell if this is the year to start kindergarten?

Students who enroll at ECS meet with our kindergarten teacher in June of the year before they begin classes. This meeting helps students to become familiar with the classroom, as well as provides an opportunity for our teacher to begin a relationship with students. During this time together students are asked to do a developmental assessment of their readiness to begin kindergarten.

Memorizing the alphabet or counting to 100 will not help your child to do better on this test; however, there are ways to help him prepare. Use the list below to check the skills your child has mastered. Then recheck every month to see what additional skills he can accomplish easily. Young children change so quickly that even in a few weeks they may be able to do more than they could do before!

Physical Readiness

• Manage bathroom needs
• Dress self
• Bounce and catch a ball
• Hop, skip and jump
• Cut, trace and draw

Emotional Readiness

• Can separate from parents
• Focus for short periods of time
• Ask for help
• Try new things
• Talk with other children
• Take turns and share
• Care for own belongings
• Respect other's property

Mental Readiness

• Follow directions
• Listen
• Make predictions
• Discuss pictures in books
• Identify alphabet letters
• Recognize rhyming sounds
• Understand that actions have both causes and effects
• Recognize groups of objects