What should my 4 year old know going into Kindergarten?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teach him to read. There is never a greater age to learn to read than at 4. The child still has lots of time, no formal schoolwork and the time to learn slowly. I taught all my kids to read before K and it pays off when they can read all the instructions for seatwork independently and gain an extra year of reading-to-learn. And all the people who pretend “it all evens out by third grade”, it doesn’t. The kids who were in the highest reading group at 5 stay in that same group (and usually the highest math group) by the time they get picked up in AAP.

Not really. Reading is overrated skill for a child entering kindergarten. What you should absolutely do from the time they are born is to read, read, read to them. They need to know about things and the world - content knowledge - in any language. Reading will get picked up in school. My kids have always been in magnet and top scorers...but...they had no idea about reading. They both learned in KG. And they both became independent readers when they were 8 yrs old. All that time, I was the one who was reading to them. Hours upon hours of story time.

This. I specifically didn't teach my kid to read. She would be bored if i did. Now she has something to learn in K and be proud of her success. I read a lot aloud to her both fiction and non fiction and we talk about all the challenging words and what they mean and complex stories etc. i would much rather she has a rich spoken vocabulary and be able to act out and draw all her imaginings than know how to decode. First month of school and she can read 1/2 the sight words they assigned for the year and decode basic instructions on worksheets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So mine knows most letters and letter sounds and scored Below Level on DIBELS at the beginning of Kindergarten. If he had said a few more letters faster, he would have been "on level". I took the attitude of most here and thought he would be fine, but definitely did not expect to see below level. I don't really get the test expectations since thats what they are teaching in kindergarten and he is beginning to read CVC words now. This is in DCPS.

At least half the kids in my older kid’s class were reading fluently when they entered k. Mine wasn’t one of them. It felt like crap at the parent meet the teacher day when kid after kid was called up to read a paragraph off the board and we were like “shoot, he can read ‘Peter is here’ on a good day.” He’s a great reader now 3 years later but it taught me something about the peer group he’s in!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He should be able to open his own lunch containers, fasten his own shoes/coat, be completely potty independent including wiping. He should be able to transition from one activity to another, be able to get along in a group, be able to focus on something that isn’t his favorite.

Don’t worry about letters etc - he will pick them up and they are easy to teach to a kid who can do all the above.

This except I disagree on letters. Kids should recognize letters by name and be able to produce their sound. Also count to 20.

Do you have an advanced degree in Childhood Ed because this is some straight up bs? When a lot of us went to school in the dark ages, many of us never went to K and didn't read by 1st. My family is full of advanced degreed grads working in finance, research, and business. Being competitive so early equates to absolutely nothing.

[Anonymous]

As a prior poster mentioned, motor skills affect learning in so many ways and are necessary for reading and writing. Work on those. The kid who isn't a 4 year old prodigy isn't actually going to end up in prison or working in fast food. Some of those kids who are pushed though...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He should be able to open his own lunch containers, fasten his own shoes/coat, be completely potty independent including wiping. He should be able to transition from one activity to another, be able to get along in a group, be able to focus on something that isn’t his favorite.

Don’t worry about letters etc - he will pick them up and they are easy to teach to a kid who can do all the above.

This except I disagree on letters. Kids should recognize letters by name and be able to produce their sound. Also count to 20.

They should be able to write them too; or if they don't, be prepared to work with them during kindergarten. With our first kid, who is now a second grader, we bought into the whole "don't push him in preschool, he'll learn it" thing. Going into kindergarten he knew his letter sounds and was reading a bit but we had not worked seriously on letter formation. The preschool wasn't interested and he was very resistant. He could write the letters but it was a laborious process and not neat at all, and he used the wrong grip half the time. Kindergarten had the kids writing sentences from the beginning without teaching them how to form letters. His handwriting was illegible when he started and it was nearly illegible when the kids were sent home in March 2020. We worked hard with him over the following summer and fall and his handwriting is now passable but still needs work -- we're about to start that Handwriting Without Tears series everyone on DCUM recommends. Clearly we should have started earlier. I remember going into the kindergarten class for the meet the teacher thing in early fall 2019, and all the kids' work was up on the wall, and just about all of them except ours and one other had neat, legible handwriting -- at the beginning of kindergarten. So clearly they had learned at home or in preschool.

We are not making this mistake with number 2, who is 4.5 and will go to kindergarten next year. We have started practicing handwriting, reading, and counting. Very gradual, like 5 minutes a day, but it is something, which is more than we did with our first. It is so hard to catch up when you start to fall behind. My second grader still struggles more than he should and I feel that if we'd started earlier he would have built up those muscles sooner and not still be playing catch-up. (Which doing pandemic first grade at home didn't help either, admittedly.)

Your children may have dysgraphia and making them write more or earlier doesn't fix it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teach him to read. There is never a greater age to learn to read than at 4. The child still has lots of time, no formal schoolwork and the time to learn slowly. I taught all my kids to read before K and it pays off when they can read all the instructions for seatwork independently and gain an extra year of reading-to-learn. And all the people who pretend “it all evens out by third grade”, it doesn’t. The kids who were in the highest reading group at 5 stay in that same group (and usually the highest math group) by the time they get picked up in AAP.

Where are the parents of the college aged kids to refute this insanity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He should be able to open his own lunch containers, fasten his own shoes/coat, be completely potty independent including wiping. He should be able to transition from one activity to another, be able to get along in a group, be able to focus on something that isn’t his favorite.

Don’t worry about letters etc - he will pick them up and they are easy to teach to a kid who can do all the above.

This except I disagree on letters. Kids should recognize letters by name and be able to produce their sound. Also count to 20.

They should be able to write them too; or if they don't, be prepared to work with them during kindergarten. With our first kid, who is now a second grader, we bought into the whole "don't push him in preschool, he'll learn it" thing. Going into kindergarten he knew his letter sounds and was reading a bit but we had not worked seriously on letter formation. The preschool wasn't interested and he was very resistant. He could write the letters but it was a laborious process and not neat at all, and he used the wrong grip half the time. Kindergarten had the kids writing sentences from the beginning without teaching them how to form letters. His handwriting was illegible when he started and it was nearly illegible when the kids were sent home in March 2020. We worked hard with him over the following summer and fall and his handwriting is now passable but still needs work -- we're about to start that Handwriting Without Tears series everyone on DCUM recommends. Clearly we should have started earlier. I remember going into the kindergarten class for the meet the teacher thing in early fall 2019, and all the kids' work was up on the wall, and just about all of them except ours and one other had neat, legible handwriting -- at the beginning of kindergarten. So clearly they had learned at home or in preschool.

We are not making this mistake with number 2, who is 4.5 and will go to kindergarten next year. We have started practicing handwriting, reading, and counting. Very gradual, like 5 minutes a day, but it is something, which is more than we did with our first. It is so hard to catch up when you start to fall behind. My second grader still struggles more than he should and I feel that if we'd started earlier he would have built up those muscles sooner and not still be playing catch-up. (Which doing pandemic first grade at home didn't help either, admittedly.)

Very similar situation with kids the exact same ages. I was blown away by how well most of the kids in my son’s K class could write. My son struggles with forming the letters properly. The end result is fine but he doesn’t do things in the correct order. Now that he’s on second he can write nearly if he takes his time and tries but he usually wants to rush and his handwriting is not very good. Our 4.5 year old is at a different preK than his brother was and they seem to be working on it more than my older son’s school did. We didn’t do any sort of workbooks or activities with our older son but with the younger one I’m trying to take advantage of his newfound interest and let him trace letters with dry erase markers, with dot markers, etc. Not pushing so much as encouraging. I don’t make him if he says he doesn’t want to. I just didn’t even offer it to my older one because I didn’t want him to feel pushed. In retrospect I was a little too hands off.

It’s easy to say oh don’t worry about it they all catch up but it’s hard when most of the kids on K can do something and yours can’t. Our elementary school community is full of parents who value academics very highly and they clearly worked with their kids before K. We’re at an AAP center so I think our school attracts that type. I wish I could change it but it’s reality. Now I know to expose/introduce my younger one to a little more pre-reading and writing stuff as opposed to thinking preschool would handle it all.