Kindergarten Readiness Skills

These are skills many children either have at some level when entering kindergarten, or acquire during kindergarten.  These useful self-help, social-emotional, and executive functioning skills help students learn. 

• Listen to stories without interrupting

• Recognize rhyming words

• Pay attention for periods of time to adult-directed tasks

• Understands actions have both cause and effect

• Show understanding of general times of day

• Cut with scissors

• Start to understand and follow rules

• Manage bathroom needs independently

• Button shirts, pants, coats, and zip up zippers

• Separate from parents 

• Identify some letters of the alphabet

• Sort similar objects by color, size, and shape

• Recognize groups of one, two, three, four and five objects

• Count to ten

• Practice personal information such as first name, last name, parents’ names, phone number and address (Make up a rhyme or song to go along with your phone number that your child can remember. Practice it regularly.)

• Safely use a variety of school materials including pencils, glue, markers, and scissors

• Know how and when to blow his/her nose and wash his/her hands

• Know how to open/close lunch boxes/lunch containers

• If your child is still learning to tie their shoes, please send them to school in shoes without laces, for safety