Trinity Anglican School
Transition Resources: Kindergarten to Prep
How do I know if my child is ready for Prep?
Starting School is a significant period in the lives of young children and their families. A positive start can help your child develop a lifelong love of learning.
The transition to school is a time of continuity and change. It presents opportunities and challenges for children, families, educators, and communities (Dockett & Perry, 2014).
Through theory, research, and practice, we understand that helping children make a positive start to school requires preparing them to meet the demands and expectations of school life. The transition to school is a process that begins well before a child’s official ‘first day’ and continues
until children and families feel a sense of belonging at school.
Every child is different, and we understand that it is sometimes difficult to gauge whether your child is ready for Prep or would benefit from another year in kindergarten. The information below may help you to understand some of the things that TAS educators consider when determining whether a child is ready for school.
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How can I improve school readiness at home?
We have developed a list of some of the skills your child will require to flourish at school and activities that you can incorporate into your day-to-day life that will help develop these skills.
By implementing these activities at home, you can support and empower your child to embrace school with confidence and curiosity. You may also like to ask your Kindergarten educators if there are any areas you should focus on.
The ability to understand words and language is important for children to be able to communicate and engage in school activities successfully.
Speech and Language
• Spend time daily talking to your child, without distractions.
• Read to your child daily to build vocabulary and language skills.
• Introduce new words and explain their meanings.
• When walking, point to items and name them.
• Model language that your child can use when engaging in daily activities and tasks.
• Correct mispronounced words sensitively
• Discuss the weather and calendars (days of the week, months, yesterday/tomorrow).
• Practice counting forwards and backwards.
• Play games/ sing songs about the alphabet and numbers/ colours/ shapes
• Share daily experiences at mealtimes.
Social skills are vital for maintaining positive interactions with others, sustaining friendships, resolving conflict, and caring for others.
Social Skills
• Arrange playgroups, playdates or outings with children of a similar age to help build social skills and independence
• Teach your child to greet others, ask and answer, ‘how are you?” and say ‘goodbye’ when leaving.
• Play board games to model turn-taking, sharing, patience and how to cope with not winning.
• Teach your child to listen, respond and ask questions
• Remind your child to focus and listen, take turns and avoid interrupting.
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The ability to manage feelings and behaviours particularly when tired, hungry, or facing new experiences.
Fine motor skills are essential for performing everyday skills like self-care and academic skills.
Recognising and regulating emotions
• Talk about feelings with children and name modelled emotions
• Help your child to identify their feelings and build emotional recognition using an “I feel” statement.
• Encourage self-expression through imaginative play and art.
• Read stories and sing songs with emotional elements, talk about character emotions and how your child feels about the story.
Finger and hand strength
• Encourage your child to use pencils, paintbrushes, chalk, and crayons
• Play games that involve picking up and manipulating small objects such as mini connect four, Jenga and marbles.
• Allow children to practice threading items onto string, sorting small objects such as coins, rice, paper clips or buttons into containers by colour, size, and shape.
• Engage in activities like cutting and pasting, colouring, puzzles, playdough and building blocks to build dexterity.
Gross motor skills are important to enable children to perform everyday functions such as walking, running, skipping, playground and sporting skills.
Independence builds confidence and selfcare skills are important for school, excursions or for visiting friends’ houses.
Physical skills and hand eye coordination
• Encourage activities like throwing, catching and sports to develop hand-eye coordination, turn taking, sharing, cooperation, and sportsmanship
• Support swimming as a whole-body exercise for strength and endurance.
• Play ‘animal walks’ pretending to be a variety of animals such as crabs, frogs, bears, or worms.
• Play hopscotch and age-appropriate obstacle courses.
• Visit playgrounds to practice climbing and swinging.
Responsibility and independence
• Encourage your child to practice getting dressed, including putting on shoes.
• Help your child practice packing, carrying and being responsible for their belongings when they leave the house.
• Prepare a packed lunch for outings and teach your child how to open their containers and packets.
• Include children in chores like setting the table, clothes on the line, folding laundry, weeding, or packing up toys.
• Encourage independent bathroom use
• Consider using a visual schedule or reward chart.
• Get ready earlier so children have more time to practise or complete activities independently.
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A positive mindset can help children feel more confident and capable, cope with stress and build healthy relationships.
Help develop a positive attitude to learning
• Share and read your favourite stories about school.
• Read to your child regularly to foster a love of learning and to develop their listening skills.
• Reinforce positive things to look forward to at school.
• Celebrate starting school by counting down to the first day, taking photos or having a family celebration.
• Attend school events or orientation activities.
• Develop persistence and confidence “I can do it”.
Practicing classroom behaviour at home helps children know what to expect and smooth the transition to ‘big’ school.
Practice classroom behaviour
• Give your child small tasks and instructions to follow, building up to 23 simple steps through games like Simon Says and Hide and Seek
• Play pretend school with toys, practicing questions and responding to instructions
• Create routines for taking breaks, winding down and packing up.
• Read books about the first day of school to help understand the rules and expectations.
• Use a visual timer to slowly increase concentration skills.
• Encourage problem-solving skills through free play and imaginative activities
• Set clear boundaries, expectations, and consistent consequences at home to help your child adjust to classroom expectations
• Use whole body listening. Legs, hands, lips still, eyes watching, brain thinking, heart ready to learn.
Mistakes are an integral part of learning and growing Being able to respond appropriately to disappointments is an important part of being resilient.
Develop the ability to move on from mistakes
• Where possible try to model accountability and acceptance of failure. Mistakes help us to learn.
• Praise your child when they can own or admit a mistake and move on from them positively, will prepare them for the classroom.
• Encourage your child to move on from minor upsets, bad times don’t last forever.
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School Readiness
self-assessment Checklist
This is a self-assessment checklist that may assist you in deciding if your child is ready to begin the transition to school. Your child may not be able to do all the things on this list and that is ok as they will refine many of the skills listed below during their time at Kindergarten. However, if there are several items that your child struggles with, they may benefit from an additional year in Kindergarten or additional support. You may wish to discuss this with your child’s educators.
Can your child:
☐ Make eye contact during a conversation
☐ Sit still on a chair for 2 minutes
☐ Respond to a simple question
☐ Recognise the need to go to the toilet, ask for permission –are they fully toilet trained
☐ Dress themselves (including shoes, socks, jackets, and redress after using the toilet)
☐ Identify and care for their own belongings
☐ Independently open and close their lunch box and drink bottle, and unwrap food
☐ Follow three steps or instructions at the same time
☐ Move to a new activity easily
☐ Interact well with children
☐ Recognise and express their feelings and needs
☐ Separate easily from parents or carer at drop off
☐ Identify letters and sounds
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☐ Self-regulate their emotional response when they need to do something they do not want to do
☐ Self-initiate, engage and sustain engagement with tasks (6 – 8 minutes)
☐ Solve basic problems and ask for help from the educator if needed
☐ Sit with a group (e.g., mat time) and remain focused
☐ Play independently and incorporate role playing when playing with others
☐ Use basic fine motor skills (e.g. grip pencils correctly, use a paintbrush or small scissors)
☐ Use basic gross motor skills (e.g. run with control, climb on playground equipment, ride a trike, catch a ball)
☐ Understand the concept of counting (e.g. may be able to count ten objects)