🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 📚 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.
- 🎯 Attention & Persistence — The ability to stay with a task long enough to complete it — without adult redirection — is the single cognitive skill that most distinguishes ready from not-yet-ready kindergarteners in most teachers' experience.
- 🧩 Independence & Self-Care — Managing bathroom needs, eating lunch, and dressing independently gives children the practical autonomy that kindergarten requires — and the self-efficacy of doing things for themselves carries into academic challenges.
- 🌈 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.
Preschoolers have a difficult time being still in the car. A long road trip does not have to be difficult. Road trips present a great opportunity to practice reading skills. Three fun activities can keep your preschoolers mind occupied and prepare them for kindergarten. Work on letter recognition, find those letters everywhere in the environment, then practice some reading with a read along book to build the pre-reading skills your preschooler will need in kindergarten.
Letter Recognition
Letters are everywhere. They are on road signs, billboards and license plates. Before your trip, make up a page listing all letters of the alphabet. Give your preschooler a sticker for each letter of the alphabet. As your child locates a letter in the environment, let them put a sticker over the top of the letter on the page. If you have a long trip, bring a simple surprise along to reward the child if and when they find all the letters.
Parents may have to help children locate letters, but preschoolers will realize that letters are all around them. Reinforce your preschooler when they identify a letter by noticing aloud, "You found an R. R's make an "rrrr" sound." By adding the sound, parents help preschoolers learn not only what the letters are, but how they sound in words.
Environmental Print
Preschoolers "read" quite often, but not in the literal sense. For example, how many times can you go past the golden arches without your preschooler wanting a kid's meal? Every area has familiar businesses, signs and brands, preschoolers often identify them. As preschooler's begin to understand that symbols have meaning, they are preparing to read.
Point out common road signs, businesses, and familiar products. When your preschooler identifies them or "reads" them, notice out loud. Saying, "You read the McDonald's sign." reinforces your preschooler's reading efforts.
Read Along Books
Purchase children's books with a CD or tape. These books are available at a number of retail or online stores. You can also choose to personalize the experience. Simply make a tape of yourself reading one of your preschooler's favorite books. A preschooler learns to associate the spoken words with the printed words.
If you know you will need quiet time on a trip, make sure you pack a portable tape or CD player and a headset. Give your child an opportunity to spend some time reading on their own.
These three simple activities will help the time pass on a road trip. Whether traveling across the city or several states away, these simple activities will help parents prepare their preschooler for kindergarten.
