🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 🏫 School Readiness — Activities that practice school-like expectations — sitting at a table, listening to instructions, transitioning between activities — directly prepare children for the structure of a kindergarten day.
- 📚 Pre-Literacy Skills — Letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and print concepts developed before kindergarten are the strongest predictors of first-grade reading success — and every literacy-rich preschool experience compounds this advantage.
- 🌈 Growth Mindset — Children who enter kindergarten believing that effort leads to improvement approach the inevitable challenges of learning new skills with the persistence that makes challenges productive rather than threatening.
- 😌 Emotional Self-Regulation — Learning to handle frustration, excitement, disappointment, and transitions without adult intervention is the kindergarten readiness skill that teachers consistently identify as most important — and hardest to teach quickly.
Preschoolers love to move their bodies. Building the large muscles (gross motor skills) is essential to the development of skills preschoolers will need for kindergarten. Help your preschooler get ready for kindergarten with these five fun large muscle activities.
1. Dance. This large muscle activity does not require a great deal of space, special equipment or talent. Simply select a favorite radio station or CD and move. Encourage your preschooler to move their arms or legs across the midsection of their body to the opposite side. Crossing the midline of the body requires using both sides of the brain, boosts the number of connections between the two sides of the brain which increases coordination. Some preschoolers love more organized dancing, so find a copy of "The Bunny Hop" or "The Chicken Dance" for these preschoolers.
2. Hopscotch. Hopscotch requires a preschooler to hop on one foot. Competitive preschoolers love to beat an adult. Hopping on one foot is a difficult skill to master. So, eliminate the rules for Hopscotch when practicing with younger preschoolers or those preschoolers that are not developmentally ready to hop on one foot. Allow hopping on two feet or touching a foot to balance. Hopscotch is a great way to practice gross motor skills.
3. Hike. Take your preschooler to the local park for a nature hike. Exploring nature uses many of the preschooler's senses. Allow time for your preschooler to investigate their surroundings. Run, jump and roll, as well. Time spent outside is often prime time to use those large muscles that don't get a workout indoors.
4. Ride. Give preschoolers the opportunity to ride a tricycle or bicycle. Alternating feet is tricky, but a great skill to build large muscles. This activity builds muscles, develops balance and improves coordination. Keep your preschooler safe by choosing a safe location and making sure they wear a helmet.
5. Create an obstacle course. Use common items found around the house to build an obstacle course. Climb over cushions from the couch, crawl under a chair, place tape on the floor to make a balance beam and any other idea you have. Show your preschooler how to finish the course.
By providing your preschooler a variety of physical activities, they are building large muscles essential to success in kindergarten. Allowing time for movement burns off energy and allows a preschooler to concentrate on specific tasks, such as drawing or writing. Dance, hop, ride, hike or navigate through these fun activities and build large muscle groups.
