Kids' School Readiness: An All-in-One Guide

In This Article

• What Do Schools Look for in Children?
• Goals of School Readiness
• Guiding Principles
• School Readiness Goals and How to Work on Them at Home
• Infant and Toddler Domains
• • Approaches to Learning
  • Social and Emotional Development 
• Language Development
• • Developmental Progression of Speech and Language
• Cognitive Development for Preschoolers
• • Developmental Progression for Math and Reasoning

How do you know when it’s time to enroll your child into a school program? Should they know any specific skills? According to The Early Childhood and Learning Center, school readiness is foundational across early childhood systems and programs.

Welcome to our series of “All-in-One” guides connecting blog writers around an important topic that is explored in-depth on our blog page. The subject of this guide explores everything parents need to know about school readiness.

It essentially means children are ready for school, families are ready to support their children's learning, and schools are ready for children. 

Many head start programs view school readiness as children possessing the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for success in school and for later learning and life. Physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development are all essential ingredients of school readiness. These are skills that you and your potential school can look at to make sure your child is ready to attend a program. 

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What Do Schools Look for in Children?

Programs must establish school readiness goals that are appropriate for the ages and development of enrolled children in the following domains:

• Approaches to Learning
• Social and Emotional Development
• Language and Literacy
• Cognition
• Perceptual, Motor, and Physical Development

Schools are also responsible for implementing and measuring progress toward school readiness goals. This helps programs individualize for each child and ensure that children know and can do what is needed to be ready for kindergarten. This is also important in determining if children are not ready to enter kindergarten or if there might be learning disabilities. If this is the case, early screening and intervention can take place and an IEP can be drafted before even entering kindergarten. 

Goals of School Readiness

Each agency must use the five domains (seen below) as a way to make their goals for children. Agencies need to articulate how:

• Their goals appropriately reflect the ages of children participating in the program - goals are divided into infant/toddler and then preschooler domains
• The curriculum and child assessment(s) address or align with the program’s established goals
• Parents were involved in the development of the goals 

These also need to target different age-appropriate skills to prepare children for kindergarten. Although the infant/toddler and preschooler domains are the same, their subcategories vary due to the assumed growth and learning that occurs between those ages. For instance, infants and young toddlers are expected to follow simple 1-step directions, but preschoolers that are ready to advance to kindergarten can follow simple 2-3-step directions without the need for clarification or repetition.

One thing to remember, no matter the age of your child, is that parental involvement is very important. If your child is in preschool already, I’m sure you are having conversations with your child’s classroom teacher frequently about their skills and the advancement to kindergarten. If this isn’t taking place, you should feel comfortable getting updates or asking your facility to provide information regarding any concerns about your child’s education. 

Most preschools use parent-communication apps such as Class Dojo. This is one way to foster communication between teachers and parents. If your school does not have this or another system, it might be worth bringing to the attention of the owner. 

Guiding Principles

Each Facility must be aligned with common principles. These principles have been around since schools have been founded. They underlie the program policies and practices that prepare young children for success in school and beyond. These principles include: 

• Each child is unique and can succeed. Children are individuals with different rates and paths of development. Each child is uniquely influenced by their prenatal envi­ronment, temperament, physiology, and life experiences. With the appropriate support, all children can be successful learners and achieve the skills, behaviors, and knowledge to be successful with their education. 
• Learning occurs within the context of relationships. Caring families, teachers, and other adults matter in a young child's life. Responsive and supportive interactions with adults are essential to a child's learning.
• Families are children's first and most important caregivers, teachers, and advocates. Families must be respected and supported as the primary influence in their child's early learning and education. Their knowledge, skills, and cultural backgrounds contribute to children's school readiness.
• Children learn best when they are emotionally and physically safe and secure. Nurturing, responsive, and consis­tent care helps create safe environments where children feel secure and valued. In these settings, children are able to engage fully in learning experiences.
• Areas of development are integrated, and children learn many concepts and skills at the same time. Any single skill, behavior, or ability may involve multiple areas of development. For example, as infants gain fine motor skills, they can manipulate objects in new ways and deepen their understanding of cause and effect. As preschoolers gain new verbal skills, they can better manage their emotions and form more complex friendships.
• Teaching must be intentional and focused on how children learn and grow. Children are active, engaged, and eager learners. Good teaching practices build on these intrinsic strengths by providing develop­mentally appropriate instruction and oppor­tunities for exploration and meaningful play.
• Every child has diverse strengths rooted in their family's culture, background, language, and beliefs. Responsive and respectful learning environments welcome children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Effective teaching practices and learning experiences build on the unique backgrounds and prior experiences of each child.

School Readiness Goals and How to Work on Them at Home

The first thing you need to know is that most states break up goals into two categories: infant/toddler domains and preschool domains. This is done because infants cannot do what toddlers can and a younger toddler cannot do what a soon-to-be preschool graduate can do. These domains are divided into several categories:

1. Approaches to learning
2. Social and Emotional Development
3. Speech and Language Development
4. Cognition 
5. Perceptual, motor, and physical development

Infant and Toddler Domains

Approaches to Learning

There are several different areas involved when it comes to learning. These areas can include, emotional/behavioral self regulation, creativity, curiosity, and cognitive self-regulations (executive functioning). Each one of these sub areas have goals that infants and toddlers should be able to master by 36 months of age.

When dealing with emotions, schools will also take into consideration the strategies children use to manage strong emotions may vary based on cultural background. For example, some children may be much more likely to use self-soothing strategies, while others may seek out comfort from adults.

Social and Emotional Development 

The second area that is focused on when a child enters school is social and emotional development. This is how a child initiates, builds, and maintains interactions and relationships with those around them. 

If you are concerned about your child’s social and emotional development, or feel they are behind in any of these areas, it’s important to talk to your pediatrician and see if a referral to a speech-language pathologist might be warranted. An SLP can evaluate and address these skills and get your child back on track so that they are progressing towards their goals!

Language Development

Language development refers to emerging abilities in listening and understanding (receptive language) and in using language (expressive language). Babies attend to the sounds of language in their environment before they are born. In the context of nurturing, responsive adult relationships, infants rapidly learn to communicate with facial expressions, gestures, and looks. 

They move from babbling to understanding many words spoken to them and then uttering or signing their first words. Toddlers learn to speak new words at an amazing pace and use language to express their needs, ask questions, and engage in short conversations.

Expand Your Child's Vocabulary and Get Ready for School!

Language skills continue to expand, and by the end of the preschool period, children:

1. speak in adult-like sentences
2. tell and retell stories
3. use verbal humor
4. engage in group discussions. 

Preschoolers are sophisticated language users who harness language in order to take in new and complex information and organize their world. As they delve into new learning experiences, they add mathematical or scientific terms to their vocabulary, such as semi-circle or T-Rex. They begin to understand word categories, such as hammers and screwdrivers are tools, and relationships among words, such as the opposite of up is down. Preschoolers with strong language skills are prepared to be successful learners in school.

Preschoolers are beginning to grasp how written language is structured into sounds and symbols. They play rhyming games and learn the names of letters and associated sounds. They take pride in recognizing their name in print and practice writing it. Preschoolers begin to understand print conventions and the different functions of print in picture books or grocery lists. 

As they listen to and talk about story books or retell and enact events, they gain an understanding of sequence, character development, and causal relationships. When preschoolers are engaged literacy learners, they are laying the foundation for becoming capable readers and writers in school.

Developmental Progression of Speech and Language

When looking at speech and communications development, there are several key areas that are looked at in determining if a child is ready for school. These areas include vocabulary, attending/understanding, emergent literacy, and communication/speaking. 

Once your child hits three, you will see the most rapid growth in vocabulary, words, and signs used. Most children have a vocabulary of 300 words at this point. If it helps, you can keep a word journal of what your child says to make sure that they are on track. Children who are from a bilingual household may have a combination of 300 words between the two languages, which is also fine!

Cognitive Development for Preschoolers

Children play an active role in their own cognitive development by exploring and testing the world around them, but they also need support from parents, teachers, and other adults. When infants and toddlers feel safe and secure, they are more willing to experiment with their world, such as discovering how a pull toy works, observing what happens when they turn on a faucet, and trying out different behaviors to see how people react. In the process, they begin to understand basic mathematical, spatial, and causal relationships. 

Toddlers also explore concepts through a variety of symbolic activities, such as drawing and pretend play. More and more, young children can rely on their developing memory to help them make sense of the world. All this activity in the first three years lays the foundation for the more complex cognitive skills that preschoolers develop.

Math for Preschoolers

Cognitive development is presented as two different domains for preschoolers — Mathematics Development and Scientific Reasoning — to reflect the increasingly complex and more differentiated cognitive abilities of this age period. Mathematics development in preschoolers refers to understanding numbers and quantities, their relationships, and operations, such as what it means to add to and take away. Mathematics also includes shapes and their structure, reasoning, measurement, classification, and patterns. Preschoolers are eager to measure their height to see how much they have grown and to chime in with repeating patterns in books and songs.

Increasingly, children use math strategies to solve problems during daily activities, such as figuring out how many more cups are needed at snack time. Because math includes generalizations and abstractions, math skills help young children connect ideas, develop logical and abstract thinking, and analyze, question, and understand the world around them. Children develop math concepts and skills through active exploration and discovery in the context of stimulating learning opportunities and intentional teaching strategies.

Scientific Reasoning for Preschoolers

Scientific Reasoning refers to the emerging ability to develop scientific knowledge about the natural and physical worlds, learn scientific skills and methods, and continue developing reasoning and problem-solving skills. For preschoolers, the scientific investigation includes making observations, recording them, talking about them, and analyzing them. Their investigations reflect their natural interests in how things work, in plants and animals, their bodies, and weather. 

In the process of investigating, they can learn to use measurement and observational tools, such as a ruler and a magnifying glass. During the early childhood years, science provides opportunities for rich vocabulary learning and collaboration with peers and fosters a sense of curiosity and motivation to learn. Problem-solving and reasoning become more complex as preschoolers gain new abilities to ask questions and gather information. Their inclination to be curious, explore, experiment, ask questions, and develop their own theories about the world makes science an important domain for enhancing learning and school success.

Because cognitive development encompasses a broad range of skills, behaviors, and concepts, children display great individual variation in their development from birth to 5. Prior experiences, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, temperament, and many other factors can impact the rate and course of cognitive development. Children with disabilities may require extra support as they use their senses and bodies to explore or as they describe their scientific investigations. The instruction and learning opportunities young children experience set the stage for their cognitive development and success.

Developmental Progression for Math and Reasoning

Some children with physical limitations may have difficulty getting or exploring objects. To support their learning, adults can observe the child's interests and provide engaging materials and experiences.