ESTADÍSTICAS DE SALUD (3.4.8) Recomendaciones del CSE:

There’s no better time to begin preparing children for school than when they are born.

• Place bright shapes, colorful mobiles, and interesting pictures in your children’s environment.

• Talk to your children. Use different expressions and tones of voice. Explain what you are doing. Encourage them to speak by praising their attempts to speak and by correcting their speech. Also, listen to your children. Don’t ignore babbling; it is an early attempt at communication.

• Play good listening music for children to sharpen hearing skills; sing to them and play nursery rhyme games.

• Read to your children and tell them stories.

• Take short trips as a family. Point out different sights and sounds. Show enthusiasm for learning and doing.

• Give children simple tasks or chores to do.

• Buy or borrow educational toys, games, and other things that children can handle.

• Participate in the schooling process. Show a special interest in what happens to your children at day care, nursery school, or elementary school. Ask your children to tell you what they do, who they talk to, and what they like or don’t like. It is not too early to talk to schoolteachers or child-care workers about your children’s progress and behavior.

• You might also want to share The Discovery Tool with your child’s child-care teachers and directors, so they too can see how your child is developing in comparison to his or her age mates, and so they too can get to know and enjoy your child better.

There are many books, games, and other resources that you can use to help prepare young children for their formal education experiences. Right now let me alert you to a great book that is designed to provide numerous activities in which you can engage your children to prepare them for the realities and demands of kindergarten.

As you probably know, there are increasing efforts by government educational agencies to make all aspects of education more academi- cally rigorous. Whether or not this emphasis on academics is appro- priate for all very young children is subject to serious debate, given that that many young children are just not developmentally ready. But such an emphasis is taking place.

Using The Kindergarten Survival Handbook: The Before School Checklist and Guide for Parents by Dr. Allana Elovson is a really good idea. It indicates the wide range of basic knowledge and skills that your child should ideally possess upon entering kindergarten.

• The Things They Need to Know to Be Ready for School, such as their name, age, sex, phone number, and address; the names and

relations of family members; the parts of their own body and where their body parts are located; the names of their clothes, some things around the house like the sink and the couch, the names of common animals and common foods; some words about how things feel and when things happen; what money buys and coins and other pieces of currency; some words for where things are and how things look, move, or do not move; places around them, such as stores, and what happens at them; which of two things is bigger or smaller; which is the largest of three different things; and words for how things compare, such as same, different, more, or less.

• What They Need to Do and Know to Understand and Be Understood, such as being able to speak clearly enough so that people other than their own family and friends can understand them easily; being able to understand the speech of children and adults other than their family members; understanding simple questions and giving simple answers; following simple directions such as where to sit, where to put a book, or where to throw a ball; being able to follow instructions that have two or more parts, such as, “Close the door, hang up your coat, and sit down, please;” and being able to tell someone how they are feeling, ask for what they need, and tell the events in a simple story in the right order.

• The Self-Help and Social Skills That They Will Need, such as being able to understand that in school, children are expected to do what their teachers ask; being comfortable away from their parent or caregiver, and with new adults and children; knowing how to wait; understanding that other people have rights and feelings, just as they do; managing, at least some of the time, to share the use of toys; sitting quietly for a while and playing with other children without having a lot of fi ghts; knowing a few ways to try to settle fi ghts; taking off and putting on their outer clothes themselves; taking themselves to the bathroom without help; washing and drying their hands and face without help; feeding themselves neatly using a spoon or fork; continuing to work on something, even when it starts to get hard, and fi nishing something before starting something else.

ease; running without falling frequently; jumping, using both feet at the same time; hoping on one foot a few times without falling; balancing on one foot for a few seconds; walking up stairs one foot after the other and walking down stairs one foot after the other, and holding the banister if they are going fast or if the stairs are steep; walking backward for six or seven steps, placing toe to heel in a straight line, without turning to look behind; throwing and catching a large ball using both hands; and carrying something on top of something else, such as an apple on a plate.

• The Small Motor Skills That Are Needed, such as stirring something in a bowl without spilling it; picking up a palm-sized ball and rolling it across the fl oor or table; stacking fi ve blocks on top of each other; knowing how to use a spoon and fork, and maybe a knife, to eat correctly; holding a pencil or crayon with the thumb and fi ngers; being able to open a screw-top jar and open a door by turning the knob; turning faucets on and off; lacing a shoelace through three large beads; cutting with scissors; fastening buttons on the front of their clothes; taking a pinch of salt or sugar, or anything that is fi nely ground; and picking up a small bean or pebble with the thumb and forefi nger.

• The Ability to Use All of Their Senses, such as seeing (seeing differences in sizes between similar objects, and saying which is smaller and which is larger); hearing (pointing to where sounds are coming from); tasting and smelling (identifying some familiar foods by taste alone); touching (identifying objects such as pencils and spoons only by touch); and body sense, such as imitating the body posture and gestures of another person.

• Being Able to Learn About Pictures, Words, and Letters, through identi- fying drawings or photos of common objects in books, newspapers, or magazines; knowing that their names and words for everything can be written down on paper; that words are written down us- ing letters; that all of the letters together are called the alphabet; that numbers such as three, six, and two can also be written with numerals: 3, 6, and 2; knowing how to hold a pencil or crayon cor- rectly so that they can make marks on a paper; and knowing how to copy a simple fi gure, such as a squiggly line or fi gure.12

These listed items provide you with a blueprint for what any child needs to know and do to be ready for the demands and expectations of kindergarten. You can create your own checklist and fi gure out home activities to assist your child in learning them. Or you can obtain the Kindergarten Survival Handbook itself, where such lists and activities are already prepared for your and your child’s use.

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