7 Reading Readiness Tips to Kickstart Kindergarten

And away we go—to Kindergarten! Whether having already attended an early learning program or enrolling into a brand new school for the very first time, the first day of kindergarten is a milestone achievement for young learners. Beginning the preparation of gearing up your new student for school readiness is a process that will vary greatly depending on the individual child. Routinely including pre-reading skills into daily activities is a resourceful way to introduce letter recognition, sight words, and basic phonics to your child. Encouraging the development of healthy, lifelong reading habits can be most effective when implemented early in the learning journey. Here are a few age-appropriate ideas for providing engaging ways you can motivate your emergent reader with reading readiness tips to kickstart kindergarten.

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7 Reading Readiness Tips to Kickstart Kindergarten

Reading readiness is the period of time when your child is most prepared to begin the process of learning to read. For many children this milestone is typically reached between the ages of 3 and 6. With all things considered, there are a variety of factors that contribute to reading readiness, if you are concerned about your child's progress, talk to their doctor or a reading specialist to assess your child's skills. 

As your child begins to demonstrate their motivation or desire to learn to read, these tips can help to develop their reading skills. Raising a confident reader can be achieved by determining the methods that best meet the needs of your child. Here a few basic ideas-

1- Tell Me More

Each day spark up conversations by asking your child to tell you about their time spent at school. Encourage including detailed explanations of activities and interactions during the day by asking open-ended questions. 

2- Word Play

Have fun with sing-a-longs, reading rhyming books, and learning to master poems and tongue twisters. These activities help to enrich your child's vocabulary and basic understanding of the meaning of words.

3- Reading for Real

Build learning connections between reading materials and real life experiences. Following the reading of stories about transportation, discover ways people travel in your area and around the world. Expanding your child's background knowledge of the world around them helps with reading comprehension. 

4- Name Games

Demonstrate the relationship between letters and their different sounds. One example would be for the name Vanessa begins with the letter "V", which also is the letter in the beginning of the word "violin". These words both begin with the letter, "V". Beginning readers will learn how to identify individual letter sounds or phonological awareness, in time learning to blend letter sounds together to pronounce words.

5- Fun Facts

Introduce entertaining education learning experiences with simple word games. Does the word "train" rhyme with the word "trail" or "rain"? Does the word "car" rhyme with the word "card" or "star"? Use these games to practice beginning and ending sounds in words, as well as rhyme concepts.

6- Trace in Space

Encourage your child to learn about the letters that are seen or said in their day-to-day routine. Ask your child to use a finger to trace a letter in the air, on paper, or even in the sand. Follow up by also saying the sound(s) of the letter. 

7- Take Notes

As often as possible, keep paper and crayons or pencils  available for your child to use to draw or write notes. Continue the fun by writing a descriptive sentence or two to help expand their thinking.

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