When Is Your Child Ready To Start Kindergarten

There are several factors to consider in deciding when your child is ready to begin school.

1) Evaluate Maturity

As a former preschool and kindergarten teacher, I believe that one of the most important aspects of a child’s readiness is his social and emotional development.

2) Assess Basic School Skills

A child should be gaining confidence in several of the following categories before you consider enrolling him in a preschool or kindergarten program:

• Gross Motor skills. Controlling the large muscles such as arms and legs with ease.

• Fine Motor skills. Controlling the small muscles in the fingers and lower arm.

• Auditory Processing skills. Hearing and understanding the spoken word.

• Visual Discrimination skills. Identifying differences and similarities between objects and symbols.

• Letter and Word Awareness. Identifying and naming the letters in the alphabet and understanding that letters form words.

• Math and Number Awareness. Knowing the names of numbers and understanding that each numbers represents a unique amount.

• Phonemic Awareness. Identifying specific sounds in individual words. 

You can assess some of these skills by working with your child to complete free printable kindergarten worksheets.  If your child is able to complete these with ease, he likely has necessary skills in the corresponding areas.

3) Complete a Formal Readiness Assessment

There are many wonderful kindergarten readiness tests available on the Internet. The results of an online assessment will give you information about whether their child is developmentally prepared to start school.

4) Ask the Teacher

This adult views your child every day within the group of same-aged peers so will likely be able to provide you with an accurate measure of how ready your child is for a school program. 

5) Invite Friends Over

See how your child plays with other children.  Does he share materials and show empathy for others? Is he able to do many of the things that his peers are doing? 

Conclusion

The key thing to consider in deciding when your child should begin school is that if your child is comfortable, he will likely thrive. In my kindergarten classes, I always had numerous children who began a formal preschool program when they were 3 and other children for whom kindergarten was their first formal educational program. In all cases, a child's success in kindergarten was dependent on his existing skill level in each of the key developmental areas, and was wholly unrelated to the age at which he first started going to school.