School Readiness
Ready for Kindergarten means more than ABCs
It’s never too early to start thinking about school readiness for your child. Mom’s healthy habits during the prenatal period can impact early brain development and help lay the groundwork for a healthy childhood. After birth, families can provide opportunities for their child to participate in positive early learning and development experiences. These positive experiences include:
- The consistent presence of at least one caring, supportive, adult
- Positive interaction on a consistent basis with that caring adult
- Effective, consistent and positive discipline
- Opportunity to learn through exploration
- Support in mastering skills at their own pace and in their own style
- Exposure to developmentally appropriate toys, books and games
- Opportunities to interact with other children socially
Children who have had these early learning experiences demonstrate improved problem solving skills, motivation and academic achievement once they reach school.
The goal of Smart Start is to ensure every child in North Carolina enters school healthy and ready to succeed. This is a tremendous task that we cannot do alone. Below is information that can help you ensure your child will be successful.
Between February and June, North Carolina elementary schools conduct kindergarten registration with each school district creating its own timeline. Click here to access local school district information.
Parents can download a spreadsheet that includes all school districts in the state, contact information and school district websites.
School Readiness Links:
- School Readiness: Starting your child off right (en Espanol)
- Kindergarten Transition Calendar (pdf)
- Family Support and School Readiness: The Connection (pdf)
- School Readiness: Getting Children Ready to Learn
- Is your child ready? Look for these developmental milestones
How can you tell if your child is ready to be successful as he/she takes this big step?
Kindergarten teachers in one North Carolina town ranked the skills and behaviors they believe five-year-olds need to begin school ready to succeed.
- 92% of teachers ranked healthy, rested and well-nourished children as the number one quality of successful kindergartners.
- Children should be able to verbally communicate their needs, wants and thoughts.
- They need to demonstrate self help skills, such as dressing themselves.
More than half of the teachers rated the following as essential to school readiness:
- Vision, hearing and dental problems are detected and addressed.
- A child knows his name and has a basic awareness of self, family and community.
- A child can follow basic rules and routines.
Most early childhood experts agree that children continue to have wide variations in their development until about the age of seven. Children develop intellectual, social, emotional and physical skills at different times and at their own pace. Because children develop skills at varying times, it is difficult to list specific tasks and behaviors to ensure school readiness.
So, while letter recognition, knowledge of animals and sounds, big and little, up and down, are important to know, it is more important that your child is socially, emotionally, and physically ready to tackle the pressures of school.