“This will be your school in a few months,” I said to him as we passed by the brick building with large trees in front and a long empty yellow bus parked by the entrance.
I try to keep him informed about where he was going to be at next year so he is familiar with what is coming up for him.
“It is still a ways away, right?” he asks.
I say yes, but as we passed on by I know it is a big change for both us.
Kindergarten Orientation
I recently had to attend a kindergarten orientation to learn what we needed to do for his elementary school life.
The principal spoke that night about what they will be working on at the start.
“Your child should be able to write his name. Know his letters of the alphabet and the sounds of them. Rhyme words in a book and know their numbers.”
I went through my mind. Through our time at home working with him on letters and numbers and through pre-school he was well on his way to knowing all of this so I felt a bit more confident as he started elementary school.
“If your kid is a long way from this, don’t worry we’ll be working on all of this in school,” the principal said. That was good to know I though for all of us parents.
“As we go through the year they’ll learn to count to 100 and do math. Be able to both write upper and lower case letters, we will help to learn words so they are ready for the next grade.”
He recommended us to work with our kids by reading to them and using flashcards.
We read to him every night. The other night he read a short book to me Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton. I was proud of him for putting in the effort to do this.
What We Need For Registration
The next step for us is Kindergarten Registration. We have to bring two forms of ID such as a water bill and our driver’s license with a school district address. For Andrew, we have to have an original birth certificate. We also needed to have contact information for the doctor and the kid’s dentist. With each day we get a little closer to the start of kindergarten, they grow up so quick it seems.
Our kid was also required to have a physical, dental and vision exams. I talk about the dental and vision exams in my earlier blogs. The physical information was provided by our doctor from a past visit.
Plus, what they ll learn throughout the year and the resources that will help them along the way. Success in the fall starts today! Kindergarten is an exciting time of learning and growth, and preparing your child for it early on will go a long way.