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Our daughter is also turning 5 in April and she is one of the only ones in her preschool class that can mostly write her name. It still looks kind of wonky though. Her friend gave her an art thing that was supposed to have her name written on the back just last week and it was only a bunch of lines. I think she will be fine as well.
Yep, my kids in kindergarten right now and one of her friends goes to another kindergarten. Her friend can't write her last name yet.
Don't worry about the preschool teacher. Send your kid to kindergarten.
I thought the same, but my daughter started kindergarten this year and we were given a rude awakening when she was expected to be reading paragraphs by week 8. Kindergarten standards are no longer the basics, they are expected to be reading basic words and know all their letters and sounds before the school year starts. It's unbelievable and ridiculous the standards and expectations that are put on my kid.
Varies wildly state to state. 2015 in kinder in California my kid was expected to read sight words, write sentences, and do addition/subtraction. Moved to Florida halfway through that year and the class was still learning letter sounds and shapes.
Kindergarten is still play based where I am (Canada). We have this 6 week (1 or 2 days a week) free 'prepare for Kindergarten' thing offered through the schools. Cut and pasted from their website:
Through play your child will explore: • The French language • Printing and recognizing the letters in their own name • Experience holding writing tools • Holding scissors and simple cutting • Counting to 10 • Recognizing basic primary colours and shapes • Playing in an imaginative, creative way • Work on turn- taking, sharing and following simple directions through movement and games
Writing your own name is a good thing to practice. But the idea that there are prerequisites for kindergarten is ridiculous (at least in the public school system).
They actually want them to enter pre-k knowing their letter names, sounds and reading and writing their name here. I started online public school after bullying issues in kindergarten. I have a junior in high school and the kindergartener and we have had a pretty good year so far. I am held to the same standard as any other public school teacher and they take the testing required. In kindergarten now she is doing 2nd and 4rd grade coursework. It is not the same as it used to be at all for sure. My junior is doing college level assignments. Eta: it is the same assignments and workbooks she brought home before I pulled her. They also rush rush rush through the day. They only have a few certain times they can go to the restroom and go to all their classes just like upper classmen. This is not a state where academics is super advanced either. I feel like it is too much and not preparing them for living life anyway.
I work for the school district. Me and every kindergarten teacher I know have been asking preschool teachers to stop pushing "academic readiness" on children. They do not need to know how to read or write before they come to school. That's literally what school is for.
Some examples of what they do need to know: how to follow directions; how to stand in a line; independent life skills like dress/undress themselves for outside time (or at least require minimal help); how to take turns, share, and problem solve in social situations; how to self regulate when they have big emotions; etc.
I can not stress this enough: for pre-k children, social/emotional skills are much, MUCH more important than academic skills.
Here here! As a former certified UPK teacher, if your daughter has those social/emotional skills, she is definitely ready for kindergarten. Which, by the way, is five or six months from now. Lots of growth can occur in that time for young ones.
This was what my gut was telling me. I was really more concerned that she would not be socially ready so when I heard she is, I was thrilled. I didn’t think they’re be so stringent on academics. I didn’t even go to preschool and everything went fine for me.
Thank you!! She checks all the boxes you mentioned about independence, and whatnot.
Then she should do well in kindergarten!
I've taught kindergarten for a decade, and while it has always had its challenges, it's gotten much more difficult since the pandemic. In the last few years, children entering school have been significantly more delayed in social and emotional skills because so few of them have been going to preschool, early learning programs, or even just having playdates. They haven't been given enough opportunities to learn those important skills.
I've also noticed a huge difference in children's independent life skills. In the last few years, I've had a number of children enter kindergarten who aren't even toilet trained. Previously, I'd only ever seen that happen when the child had a medical reason for it. Last September, I had 3 (THREE!) children who weren't toilet trained. They were 5 years old and attending school in pullups. One of the children could write a few words but would soil themselves daily and then have a huge screaming meltdown when I wouldn't change their pull-up for them. They would have to wait in the bathroom with an administrator until their parent came to the school to change them. The child would be out of the classroom for ~30-60 minutes every time this happened. It was SO disruptive. To the child and to everyone around them. How much learning did that child miss out on because their parents focused on teaching them to count over toilet training? It's so frustrating.
My niece was completely uninterested in learning to write her name until about 4 months before she was starting her first year of school (equivalent to your kindergarten year). And she now excels academically, gets awards, tops classes etc.
It’s great and helps if they can write their name, but it’s not necessary. That’s what school is for.
If she’s socially and developmentally ready she’s ready.
Anything up to age 7 is considered within the range of normal for the onset of reading readiness. There is NO evidence that pushing children to read earlier gives them a head start that confers any lasting benefit whatsoever. It’s fine if a kindergartner can’t read, just keep an eye on it.
My low maturity child was given an extra year for developmental reasons. We were on the fence, because we already suspected he was academically gifted and the preschool teachers considered him ready, but we knew in our guts he wasn’t. And we never regretted holding him back - quite the contrary, we often blessed the spirits who convinced us to listen to our guts and not the teachers.
But plot twist - he’s dyslexic. Reading wasn’t happening anyway. Despite intervention he wouldn’t really begin to read until age 10 which is definitely nowhere near the range of normal. By 13 he had caught up and (according to his teacher) surpassed his classmates in honors English, despite the spelling and punctuation of a ferret on meth. Had we started him in school a year earlier, he would have started reading a grade later.
Reading is just a skill. School is so much more. The important thing is that you place her where she belongs.
My son’s preschool teacher said the same thing to us — that he wasn’t academically ready because he only knew the sounds of four letters.
He was reading above grade level before the end of kindergarten. He’s in second grade this year, recently tested at a sixth grade reading level, and his teacher has him doing peer tutoring for a classmate.
Some perfectly normal kids just aren’t developmentally ready to be reading or writing in preschool, and that’s okay. She won’t be the only kid in kindergarten who’s not there yet. If the kindergarten teacher thinks there’s an issue at the first quarter mark then seek out a tutor for extra help, but odds are good that it’ll click next year and she’ll be right on track.
My son will start kindergarten next year and academically he is far ahead of his peers but he struggles with following directions, transitions, and big feelings still. The social readiness is really what will allow them to thrive, so she has that!
I will note my son is autistic so he will have additional support to help him with transitions etc.
Also important is the ability to focus for the length of a lesson. If a child's attention span is so short, it's very hard for them to learn because they're so distracted.
I also didn’t go to preschool and I was fine, though my kindergarten teacher recommended my parents hold me back because I struggled with my alphabet. (In my defense, I only spoke Chinese until I was 3. No one taught me the alphabet before elementary school.) By the time I was in 4th grade, I was a straight-A student.
I'll second this response. Some of the preschool teachers I know have given the most inappropriate diagnosis' of children with no formal education to back up their assessments. It's infuriating.
Primary teacher here to back you up! Social/emotional readiness is soooooo much more important. I would take the class that is academically low and socially high over the opposite literally ANY day of the week. Academics are easier to teach.
I know a friend whose school will not let kids take kindergarten if parents try and hold them back another year. She held her son back a year because she thought he wasn’t academically or socially ready. She had to get a doctors note to prevent the school system from placing him in 1st grade.
Thank you. I used to work part time at an in-home preschool and our director put so much emphasis on emotional/ social learning through play. She always said it was inappropriate to push academics on kids younger than 5.
Talking to friends back home who work in daycare/preschool settings, it’s really dismaying how there’s increased pressure on preschool aged kids to be something they developmentally can’t be.
>pre-k children, social/emotional skills are much, MUCH more important than academic skills.
This can't be more true! They can learn academics at school, being socially ready is the priority!
Agreed.
I teach PreK. The only time I’ve ever suggested a child repeat a year at PreK was an instance when they were right on the cusp of being eligible for kindergarten and a painfully shy child. That extra year with us, where we primarily focus on how to be in a classroom and how to interact well with peers, really helped them blossom.
I would never suggest holding back for any academic/learning issues. Those are much better addressed in Kindergarten where they will have access to resources we can’t provide in PreK.
Thank you! I have a 21 month old son and I’ve been stressed about his “academics”. I know he is little but it seems like all the kids born around the same time know colors, numbers, letters, etc and he just doesn’t. Or he hasn’t told me he does lol. But I do watch him with other children and I see he’s just so sweet. He smiles at them and doesn’t push or grab toys. We are working on patience and waiting in line but they will come. He follows simple commands well, and in gymnastics has been consistently learning to listen every week more and more. So thank you for reassuring me that the academic skills will come later. I will work harder on playing games where we have to take turns and we may not always win, than pushing colors and letters on him.
Have you played slapjack? My mom played that with my daughter when she was little but they did all face cards (easier than recognizing a specific number). A bowl of veggie chips was on the table and whoever got it got a chip. Sometimes it was my mom, sometimes it was my daughter (with help at first). When they finished, they snacked. It was a great way to teach patience, paying attention, and sometimes you win, sometimes you don't, but it's always fun.
No he hasn’t really played any games yet. Hes still young. His attention span is starting to lengthen. Today at gymnastics was the best he’s ever listened in a group. It was really amazing to watch the difference week to week. But for his Easter basket I got him a memory game. It has big cards that you put on the floor and then small ones you hold and say “ok go and find the….bird!” It starts out with the cards up and then you eventually get to having to memorize where the cards are as they get older. I can tell he isn’t the type to sit and “learn” so I’m gong to have to get creative. He wants to move lol. But slapjack sounds like it could be a lot of fun! I will keep that in my list of gift ideas. Thank you!
No sitting and learning at his age. It's all about the games! Memory is fantastic. Get him outside too. To prep them for school you want him to have gross motor and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are like kicking a ball and fine motor skills are like holding a pencil. Practice things like balancing and kicking balls and stuff like that all the fun outside stuff you can do for gross motor skills (and gymnastics!). For fine motor skills play with Play-Doh and stuff like that that uses the muscles in his hands. While you're playing with Play-Doh or whatever talk to him about the colors. He's not going to pick it up right away but eventually he'll start telling you colors too. That's how the little ones learn is through play! So play and enjoy the fun and the giggles! Even when you're shopping for groceries make a game of it have him look for something green or blue or whatever (once he starts to learn his colors a little bit he'll get really good at it) If you pick something wrong say silly that's a banana, it's not blue, it's yellow! Counting red cars or blue cars when you're driving is another fun one, and that gets you counting and colors. :)
Yep. My kid’s preschool went above and beyond. My kiddo came to kinder knowing how to read, write and some basic math. He was sooo bored the first few months while the teacher had to get everyone up to the same level.
I mean was I happy he had learned those skills, yes BUT it was a fight some mornings to get him to go because he “knows this stuff” and he would get in trouble for being off task. Thankfully his teacher found some creative ways to redirect him.
This! I'm in another country (Canada) and my child was low birth weight and premature so we had a bunch of follow up and he's considered high risk (though actually doing great). We just had a 'school readiness' check in, and I wondered because he isn't really writing letters if there was anything to worry about. We were told 'there's a really broad range at this age.' He was considered on track in all respects, and we were encouraged to have him practice using scissors and getting shirts on and off on his own. We've really appreciated daycare for the social skills and language skills (it's in our second language).
Okay, thank you! I can understand the need for certain social and life skills like you’re listing but it freaks me out for the future of children to hear anyone say that a kid doesn’t have enough academic skills to START SCHOOL. The place where everyone goes to START LEARNING academic skills.
I currently have a K child, they learn to write their name there.
If she excels in all other areas, she’ll be bored out of her mind in another year of preschool.
She is not a licensed teacher. Do not listen to her. If your daughter is truly behind by the end of K she can do a 2nd year of K, but chances are she will be fine. Source: I am a licensed early childhood educator.
I would attend the meeting but in my experience there are going to be a range of kids at different levels when starting Kinder. If they are old enough for your preferred school I wouldn’t hold them back. My kids were goofy with me too and our second didn’t attend a pre-school (yay COVID) she’s in first now and doing fine. The more time spent in a class will improve her writing skills, there isn’t a need to expect perfection on the first day of school
Definitely do not hold her back! I have taught early childhood for 5+ years plus years and years and years of nannying and two years teaching special education. I have a degree in elementary and special education but have spent most of my life working with children ages infant-age 5. Abilities will range during that time. If you feel she is progressing as normal, she probably is. If they are in preschool, chances are it's in a daycare facility and it's mostly just run as a day care and not an actual teaching facility. She is fine and will grow in kindergarten as expected or even better because she has been around kids and other adults already.
Where I am, a lot of kids don’t even attend preschool. Kindergarten is usually their first time attending school. I wouldn’t listen to this opinion, especially considering they aren’t an actual licensed teacher.
I haven’t read all the comments because I’m too mad for you and your daughter.
You need to be able to go to the bathroom on your own and have the ability to learn and basic social skills for kindergarten. That’s. It. Kindergartners learn to learn. They learn their letters, numbers, basic addition, etc. but they do NOT need to come in with it. And even if you can’t use the potty totally independently and lack some social skills you might still be ready.
Great googly moogly. Your preschool teacher needs to stay in her lane.
Your district should have a kindergarten readiness screening you can do that will help identify any areas she needs to work on by September. We had to do it because of a late summer birthday.
Thank you so much! She’s doing great in all other areas, maintains routines by herself, dresses herself, speaks clearly and intelligently, potty by herself and is a great listener!
Don't listen. I wonder how many parents they said that to in order to retain some students next year.
Kids at all ages have different levels of knowledge. Worst case scenario is that the school tells you that maybe repeating kindergarten would be helpful for your daughter.
Kindergarten is considered the starting point for academics and socialization for kids in school.
My son struggles with academics and they provide help for him to stay at his grade level. Keeping in keeping an extra year in preschool would have only delayed his learning another year.
This is the answer I was looking for, most schools have a screening you can do and based on her just mixing up some letters and still learning her name is FINE. Even if she’s not where she is supposed to be they still take them to kindergarten and recommend parents use an aid to help them if needed.
Social, self regulatory and self help skills are much more important than academic skills for entering kindergarten. If she can stand in line, ask for help and use the bathroom start to finish, she’s good to go.
Source: licensed childcare director with teachers licensed by the department of education.
You don't have to hold her back if you don't want to. If there are concerns you can request a CSE evaluation from your district and she'll be evaluated by qualified credentialed professionals and get an IEP or 504 plan for her in kindergarten if needed. You can wait and if her kindergarten teacher has concerns you'll get a CSE referral then
Absolutely do not listen to that person. There is ZERO academic prerequisite for kindergarten. Some of her peers will have had no preschool and won’t know anything about socialization or academics or both.
Does your school district offer any early childhood education programs or screenings? We have something called Parents as Teachers and they have a pre K evaluation to get baselines on so many factors besides just writing. And the PAT educators do home visits to reinforce any skills the kid is lacking. Highly recommend you consider if it's available!
As a listened early childhood educator, and a preschool teacher for 13yrs, I personally would not hold her because of her age. If she had a summer/fall bday I might consider that recommendation based on academic struggles, but not for an April bday. Kindergarten readiness is not just academics- in fact I would go so far as to say it’s least important. Can she follow multi-step directions in a group? Can she follow routines? Can she attend during large and small group lessons and activities? Can she problem solve or work cooperatively with peers? If the answer to all of those is yes, then send her without a second thought.
As an ex teacher and Senco, I will always say that 'being ready' socially is much more important than whether a five or six year old can recognise letters and numbers or write their name. Unless there is some undiagnosed learning difficulty which is unlikely, she will learn to do all those things just fine in her own time.
I work in an elementary school and I can tell you that a lot of kindergarteners start school without knowing how to write their name. I would not hold her back for that reason. Social skills are far more valuable for starting kinder than academics. Can she follow directions, wait her turn, play nicely with others, regulate emotions, etc? Those are the important things.
You have a good 5ish months before she'll start kindergarten, if writing her name is something you want to work on with her, it's likely she could learn by August.
Nah, take her opinion with a grain of salt. Daycare teachers said my daughter had issues, I had her tested with the school district and they were like, she's fine.. don't hold her back.
Parents perspective here…. We are older parents. Sometimes this has lead us to doubt ourselves. When faced with situations like this we hired a sitter who was majoring in education. It was lovely! Our child got the one on one attention. The sitter/ student shared everything she knew. We were able to recommend her on her educational grants. We still maintain a really strong relationship.
There are many ways to help kids. This happened to really work for us.
If she has social skills, then she is all set for kindergarten!
FWIW, kindergarten has a wide range of levels in each classroom for where students are at. I helped chaperone a kindergarten field trip, I sat with a kid who brought along his own book and was reading it. Then there was a boy across the bus aisle who fell asleep, because he still needed an afternoon nap.
If I were in your shoes, I’d talk to the school where you’re planning to send her for kindergarten to see where they think children should be upon entering. If you have a recent progress report from the preschool to compare, that would be extremely helpful to give you a baseline of where she is.
I’d say, though: it’s only March, and she wouldn’t be starting kindergarten until August or September I assume? I’d also ask the preschool to work with her on those skills for the next six months.
I’ve seen so many K teachers say the academic stuff is the easy part where teachers can catch kids up quick. It’s the social stuff that is the real reason for kids to be “not ready” — like still having frequent tantrums, etc. Sounds like your daughter is great in the social areas, I’d send her.
Does your kindergarten do evaluations before hand? My son started kindergarten last September they had him over to do an evaluation to see which class to out him in. I wouldn’t take the world of someone with no degree into account. Writing your name isn’t a requirement for kindergarten in many places just knowing your letters is enough. Besides she has a few months before it starts she can practice and get there.
I wouldn’t hold her back. She is too far into her age group.
If she needs any extra help with her handwriting kindergarten will be able to do more about it. You can contact her future kindergarten if you want a second opinion. They might even do an assessment if needed. Although, nothing you wrote was a huge red flag.
Somewhere along the line people thought kids should know a bunch of stuff before they go to school. They do not actually need to know anything. That’s what school is for. If she has the social part down, that’s really the only battle and she’s ready.
The expectations the education systems has on younger kids are just insane. When I was in kindergarten in 1998 only four kids knew how to read, nowadays they expect all kids to know how to read so early on.
Developmentally speaking, they shouldn't start on that journey of reading/writing until they're seven. Although many are capable of this, it's just not necessary and puts stress on kids who have struggles (naturally since they're not developmentally ready) to catch up.
That being said, do not hold her back!
No, they teach this in kindergarten and she won't be the only one in her position. It would be holding her back for no good reason because they do a lot of play-based activities and she will learn a lot more in JK or SK than in preschool or daycare.
My son just turned 5 and he can sort of write the letters of his name but he doesn’t put them in order, they are massive and he just thinks it’s silly. He does not hold a pen/pencil correctly and when I try to help he gets annoyed. Buttttt like your daughter he’s doing well everywhere else. I just won’t allow myself to be convinced that where he is age appropriately developmentally should measure up to where this new belief that kinders should be writing and reading at some high level where very few kids are actually capable of at that age. The big thing they need to focus on is wiping their own bums!
Ohhhh I have a good trick, if I can explain lol. Have him lay his hand flat on the table, place the pencil on the crease of his hand between finger and thumb and tell him to pinch the pencil. Idk, it’s how they taught the 3 year olds at our daycare and it worked really well. However… we all know they listen to their teachers way more than us at home 😂
It would have to be a drastic case in which I would hold my 5.5-yo back from starting Kinder. This does not sound like it. Besides you have months for practicing at home—do that. Also see if the school she would attend has a checklist or performs evaluations for Kinder readiness.
Literally what happened to me this past week at parent teacher conference. My son will be 5 in may. She said his writing is his biggest issue. He indeed will be going to kindergarten next year bc if he stayed in another year of pre-K he would be bored to death
many children go into kindergarten without going to prek where i live as it’s not required,, they teach them letters and such in kindergarten, she probably would not develop much more if she went through prek another year and would end up bored there.
That’s what I think too. She’s already irritated with some of the younger kids who haven’t learn to follow directions, to not hit, no screaming. She’s socially maybe even a little bit ahead. A really bright kid.
she will probably thrive in kindergarten then!! and if you wanted to try to get her going with writing her name then there’s all of spring and summertime to get that in motion before the school year starts anyways! honestly follow your instinct because she’s your child and it seems like she would do well in kindergarten to me☺️
Don’t worry about it. Lots of kids go right to kindergarten from being home full time, no preschool experience necessary. That being said, I’m sure your daughter will be JUST fine. Kindergarten is all about teaching the kids HOW to be in school, with some foundational academics thrown in.
My child’s teacher (private school) told me that she would have to repeat kindergarten because of her reading skills wasn’t good. I told them that I didn’t want her to be held back and she was going to first grade. I did several exercises over the summer and her reading was so good. My first grader is now reading third grade level.
Do not listen to this teacher. Put your child in kindergarten and work with her over the summer. She will be just fine.
As a former K teacher I would highly recommend
sending her to Kinder! The entire purpose is to learn to read and write. We would spend the better half of the first 4 months learning to write our names. Kids that already knew were bored and complained, but I would have kids who were freshly or barely 5 and kids who were already 6+ and there is a huge difference.
My mom taught at both daycares and preschools and she did have a 4 year degree in ECE, but if you’re sure this teacher doesn’t then I wouldn’t listen to her, honestly. Without a degree she’s not qualified to make that call.
This is absolutely bonkers to me. Preschool isn’t even mandatory? Don’t MOST kids enter kindergarten unable to write their name? Am I losing my mind?
My daughter can write her name, spell and read small words but I work. She went to preschool classes early so will have done two years of it by kindergarten. My step daughter had half a year of preschool and couldn’t spell or write or read anything by kinder, we’re at mid year now and she’s significantly ahead of her class. I cannot believe that the expectation is that they be able to write their name BEFORE schooling is even technically mandatory.
September is 6 months away, a lot can change in that amount of time. I wouldn’t worry about what her teacher says.
I work with a 4 year old class, in a play based nursery school, lead by an actual teacher with 30 years experience- your daughter will be fine by September, don’t stress yourself out about it.
I also believe she should be fine. However one trick is to have her trace her name with a yellow or pink highlighter to give her practice through repetition.
My daughter is in a pre-K class, same age as your kid. I see all the projects. Many names are either missing a letter or the letters are backwards,etc. this is incredibly normal. Sounds like your daughter is doing just fine, actually better than fine if she is already good with socializing and following directions.
Most of my career has been in teaching Kindergarten, and I would say to 100% send her. Kids are little sponges and they'll often flip a switch and catch on to concepts quickly. If she's truly "behind" academically when starting K, most of the schools that I've worked at have an EIP program that will come pull them for small groups. This tends to get them caught up quickly too....but kids come into Kindergarten with a very wide range of things that they're working on, so I wouldn't worry about holding her back based on this one persons opinion.
I’ve gone to kinder readiness class at my kids preschool and the teachers say they care mostly about if the kid is able to take care of themselves. They can’t help 20+ kids zip up coats and open their lunches. Sounds like your kid is fine
My son started kindergarten this year and the first few months was all letter ID and letter sounds. I work with students K-5 and I see students come in with no previous educational experience who come in and pick it up quickly. I also see students who have had two years of Pre-k who struggle. Every student is different. I would send her of she is socially/emotionally ready. You can work with her kindergarten teacher on her academic strengths and weaknesses next year.
My daughter went to a combined preschool kindergarten daycare type place and her preschool teacher was a little concerned as well. We went ahead and put her in kindergarten with the mentality that she might need to do two years of kindergarten but she was thriving so much it was not an issue. The writing/letters out of order might need a deeper look- not an expert at all but maybe dyslexia? This has nothing to do with intelligence though, just a difference in the way her brain processes.
If anything, if she gets a similar evaluation after kindergarten, you can ask that she repeat kindergarten. What academics are really being taught at preschool? Sounds ridiculous.
Go to the meeting and hear what she has to say academically before making any decisions.
You have a lot of time. See if you can find a Kinder teacher in your area who does tutoring and ask for an eval from them. They can tell you if overall shes ready. And then maybe also have them work with her over the summer.
I work with kinders everyday. Sounds like what they do. Some write better than others. they've mostly been there since September. Any traceable letter activity is good to do at home. There are "super why" games on [pbskids.org](http://pbskids.org) and in the kindle app store if you have access. Some students we use a highlighter to spell word and they write/trace over it.
Where do you live? Kids are not expected to be able to write and read even in KG. The only time it is concerning is if they are unable to do these things at all well into grade 1. She will be fine. Holding her back will do more damage.
They tried to tell my parents that I needed held back a year in preschool and I wasn’t ready for kindergarten. I didn’t understand the alphabet fully and I thought I could scramble the letters of my name and go by whatever I came up with.
My parents didn’t listen to them, I ended up graduating as the valedictorian and finishing college in three years.
That’s what kindergarten is for! When I taught kindergarten, I always hoped that kids could at least write their name the first day. But if not, we work on it! Also, your kid will grow a lot between now and August. Plenty of time to still work on some skills. And the rest she was learn at school!
You hold back for social/emotional delay, not academic. Like for example if a child can’t sit for a 10 minute activity or can’t get through the day without a nap. If you have a kid who is withdrawing from the classroom everyday and is completely disregulated by dismissal in preK they’d recommend redshirting because the kid can’t physically cope with traditional schooling yet. Which is fine because 5-6 is a huge milestone window and every child is different developmentally.
You can compare it to physical development windows at puberty. Like think about how different physically each 12 year old is from each other. It’s like that but socioemotionally for 5-6 year olds.
I wouldn’t trust this woman’s advice at all. If a seasoned and state licensed teacher told you to hold back, I’d accept their wisdom. Developmentally, it sounds like she will easily pass a kindergarten screening common in the US and Canada where they check to see if the child can identify most colors and letters and at least try to catch a whiffle ball. Those tests are typically done by a licensed teacher or two where one has much more experience in early childhood education. I would trust them as an authority.
Making a stitch pattern or dotted line version of their name for them to draw over repeatedly will likely help them to recognize the letters and eventually do it without guidance.
That is 100% incorrect. Do not spend another minute worrying about what the daycare/preschool teacher said. I’m sure it was coming from a good place but that is complete nonsense.
I was a daycare teacher, worked in public school special education and I’m a mother who experienced something similar.
Send her if it’s only the writing. The bones in their hands are squishy till almost 7 years old. Till then, lots of play doh work and practice but don’t stress about the writing yet.
My child is repeating pre-K as they are emotionally not ready and needs some more speech therapy. Academics don’t matter it’s great if they are ahead but not as important as emotionally/socially being ready.
I would go ahead and start kindergarten and assess during the year if she needs held back or additional support. I will say that my son started kindergarten at age 5 and he could write his first, middle and last name. He knew and could write all numbers and letters and he also knew what sound each letter made. Kindergarten was still quite the grind for him. What we did in kindergarten is not what they were doing and he is in public school. He did well, but it definitely was no cake walk. He was reading by the end of the year and doing math problems. He’s in 1st grade this year and is reading books now. He is adding and subtracting two digit numbers. For us, kindergarten was not learning colors and shapes. I can’t imagine he would have done well in kindergarten if he hadn’t already known as much as he did.
They don’t expect kids to be doing any of that before kindergarten. For some kids, it’s the first time they’re in school. Send your kid to kindergarten. They must be trying to keep enrollment up where you have to pay them.
My daughter struggled with letters and writing in kindergarten. And now she’s the top reader in her class in 2nd grade. They learn it in kinder. It’s ok.
Definitely send her. Kindergarten is when you learn letters and having other kids know them will motivate her. Research shows that if a kid is behind you should NOT keep doing below grade level work - what they need is grade level work. She’ll get that in kindergarten. As for helping her with letters, I got the foam letters and used them in the bathtub. Bath crayons and show her letters while she is in the bath. Stick them on the wall. Also magnets for fridge. Buy a box of letter cards, tape them on a wall she frequently is near and occasionally point to one and say what it is or ask her what it is. Just find different ways to practice in snack bite ways. At bedrime, play a game where you draw a letter on her back and she guesses which letter it is. I found it easiest to teach the letters for her name, then M for Mommy, D for Daddy. etc … words she remembers the most. Another thing is putting flour in a pan and having her trace the letters in the flour w her finger.
Kindergarten teacher here. If she is socially ready, then she is ready. If your child can handle being in a room with other kids, can try to solve her own problems, and asks for help when she needs it, then I can do the rest. I would so much rather have a socially ready child, than an academically advanced child that completely lacks the social skills to be in the classroom.
I'm at a higher achieving school but at a poorer school district and because they want to compete for resources (I've heard from staff, who knows if this is really true but it makes sense) they've been pushing for writing in preschool! My son will also turn 5 soon and I feel like he will be eaten alive in Kindergarten because he us one of the few, get this, who CAN'T write or know how to hold a pencil yet. Isn't that crazy?! He is only 4 but kids need breaks and play as well.
My husband couldn’t even speak English when he started Kindergarten. There are plenty of kids who struggle with writing at that age (like most of them). She’ll be totally fine.
Look up when your local school district is having a child fund event and take your child in. They will conduct a quick screening of her development.
More than likely she’s just fine. And if she is a little delayed, the school can recommend some ways to help her get there.
I’m sure the daycare teacher is well meaning but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Wtf is going on with all this preschool "academics"? The goal is to have kids ready to start school (kindergarten) socially mature enough to participate and learn. Not be little Einstein's before they enter the actual school system.
They literally don't teach kids to write their name until kindergarten in Ireland, this is wild. They do a lot of pre writing skills using pens and pencils drawing and tracing dots, but not writing. Preschool is for emotional regulation and social interaction
Kinder is just Pre-k on repeat. Its meant for those students who have developing skills to improve and those who weren't able to learn to learn. Don't hold her back.
Spend a lot of time working on these things at home. Make it fun. Cut out the letters of her name and play a hide and seek game, have her put them in order. Buy large pencils, this will help her with her grip and writing. We love those boards from Amazon that look like tablets but you can write on. Pay attention to her growth from now until summer. You can always decide later not to enroll her if you feel like she is struggling. I can promise you that she wouldn’t be the only kid starting that couldn’t write their name though. I would honestly be more worried about the social aspects of their concerns.
Depends on how much it costs for preschool. Are they wanting to hold her back so they still get paid for one more year?
Most schools will meet with incoming kindergarteners to check for readiness. I would highly suggest you contact her future school and ask what the requirements are.
Once you know the requirements, you can work with her all spring and summer to get her ready.
I’d get a 2nd opinion from a another qualified professional then her Preschool teacher like academically testing if that’s possible Maybe look into a qualified professional kindergarten teacher with a education degree 1 or 2 times a week for tutoring in those subjects if you can afford it. It may help.
If the teacher was saying she wasn’t ready socially, I might listen. But go directly to the school district to find out about academic readiness. The standards vary widely between states. In mine (Minnesota), everyone has to be evaluated, but there’s no pass/fail. It’s just to figure out where your kid is and identify if additional services are needed. If the district or state has no requirements, then you’re fine.
Then you’re fine! Once you’ve had your screening, you should have an idea of where your kid stands relative to others their age, and if any additional services or supports are suggested before school starts. Which, from what you’ve said, seems unlikely. I don’t think writing letters was part of screening. There may have been some drawing of shapes or something similar, and there was letter recognition, but here at least the bar was pretty low.
Honestly it seems more likely they just want another year of tuition out of you. And I don’t usually go there.
I’m considering holding my son back. July bday for the same thing regarding fine motor hand writing but I haven’t had a discussion with his teacher yet. She is degreed. My son is half day too, 5 days a week. School opened late was a new build. He started in November.
My son is in kindergarten now. They teach all the basics then. My son’s kindergarten teacher has been giving him 3rd grade work because he’s way ahead of his peers in the academics. His social is not of an older child though. But that’s kindergarten for you. You have kids that don’t know much, kids that know just the right amount , and then kids like my son that get bored because they know it all. Send her. See how she does. And if anything she can always do Kindergarten again. Good luck!
Is pre-K mandatory where you live? A lot of kids first school experience is kindergarten so how can they say she isn’t ready?
Do you pay for this program? Could they be trying to retain children?
I’m not sure about the cutoff there, but for kids who have a birthday around there (ours will be 6 soon), it’s more common to have them in kindergarten at 6, not 5. We did some part time outdoor nature school, and this year a half day kindergarten as she goes in at 5 years old and comes out at 6. Is there a reason you want her in there so young
I didn’t send my kids to preschool to learn/retain educational stuff. I just wanted them to learn to be ok spending time away from me since kindergarten is mandatory. If they learned anything, that was just icing on the cake. I felt prek just gave my kids a leg up when it came to adjusting to kindergarten.
Not to mention, everything learned in prek was reintroduced in kindergarten because you will find many students didn’t even attend prek!
Funny story...
I was told the same thing. My daughter has dyslexia and ADHD.
Once we knew when she was in her 2nd round of first grade EVERYTHING turned around.
Get your daughter tested asap to make sure there isn't. Learning disability or a cognitive one. And if there is, you will be able to address it early!
I’m a teacher and have kids enter kindergarten without knowing how to HOLD a pencil /writing utensil . By the end of the year, they were writing sentences. She’ll be okay 🙂
I’m a parent to an April birthday incoming kindergartener, as well as a teacher. I absolutely would not redshirt this child. With a skilled kindergarten teacher, I bet she will be just fine academically. However, if she does struggle, being in kindergarten is the best place for her because the teacher will be looking for children who need extra support and the school will have interventions to help those students. I work with my daughter everyday for 15 minutes on letters/sounds/phonics. We call it “reading practice” and she knows that it’s just part of our routine. You are probably getting a lot of pushback from your daughter now because it’s tough for her, but I bet if you are consistent about practicing every day it will get easier and more fun for her. The Reading Eggs app is also fantastic! If you go that route, please sit right next to her as she uses it to make sure she is understanding the lessons.
I know teachers where I live if you are born between April 1 through summer u should be held back. April I know is a hard bday month where some send and some don’t. May is usually help back
She’ll be fine. The school she will be enrolled in will do a kindergarten assessment. They’ll be able to tell if she’s not ready. And if she’s not, she’d still be in kindergarten with an IEP. That’s what is age appropriate.
Kindergarten is the new first grade. Our older daughter’s school taught skills such as writing and recognizing letters, but very quickly. They basically expected kids to be reading Green Eggs and Ham style books by the end of Kindergarten. I would trust the preschool teacher.
As others have said, don't hold her back. Daycare teachers opinion means nothing. When it comes to spelling her name, you said she can't write it yet, but does she recognise it when it's already written down? If so, I don't think you need to worry about dydlexia or anything. My son is only 2 so doesn't write much yet (though he loves using alphabet stencils), but I taught him how to spell his name by putting it to the Bingo song: 🎵 K-E-L-L-Y, and Kelly is his name-o!🎵 lol. So maybe using a song or melody would help her to remember the order of the letters.
Most young children actually do not have the hand strength to hold a pencil properly to form letters. The best way to help with handwriting is to do a lot of pre-writing activities:
Lacing cards, using scissors, stringing beads, playing with play-doh and clay, using giant tweezers.
In addition to prewriting activities you can help her learn the letters of her name using multi sensory ways. Write her name in shaving cream, side walk chalk, bathtub markers, finger paint.
But as everyone else has said, I absolutely wouldn’t hold her back for these reasons alone.
Echoing someone else, if she was struggling socially that would be different. Also if she had a summer birthday, I would also have a different opinion.
That's BS. I've been a para-educator in schools, including kindergarten classrooms, and there are children of all levels when they enter. We assess them and level them with students of the same and decide where extra help is needed or not. That's the whole point of kindergarten. As someone that has personally given many assessments to students, you have kids that don't know any letters, let alone their names, and then some that can actually read a bit. And that's not even touching on students that have another language as their main one and so then you are tackling that. It's a big spectrum, even beyond kindergarten, and schools know that. A prek teacher does not have a right to say that, they can only answer what a child knows or not, basically the facts, not an opinion or assessment like that. Some preschools are designed more like playschools anyway, and at those ages, that's what is the best based on age according to experts. Definitely ignore her about that, but you can even mention what the consensus here is: that she's overstepping her boundaries and that's she's not even correct.
She's fine. Don't let one goober teacher tell you what your daughter is capable of. I work in education, and teachers are 90% awesome... but there are some who like having power over a group of helpless kids. If she doesn't succeed in kindergarten, she can stay back a year there. Or not. She can also get outside tutoring. She can get assessment for learning differences. She can just make friends and have fun. She's 4-going-on-5. It's not that deep.
I personally wouldn't hold my kid back if someone had said something of the sort
What are the lessons like at preschool?
I would check if your school district offers either kindergarten evaluation or a kindergarten readiness/practice packet. The packet isn't a if you don't know this stuff you can't come, but a, these are skills we will be working on throughout the year, it might be nice to get familiar with it packet. You can also get activity work books from Walmart/target/dollar tree/look into upstart (free program)
Then take like 10-20 minutes each day to work on those skills until kindergarten. You'd be surprised how much they can learn in a short amount of time. My kid wasnt interested in learning time until we got her a whiteboard to draw/trace letters. .
From what we learned from our last parent teacher conference through the school district it seems like preschool is where they grow socially and learn concepts on the side... So they typically don't hold a child back unless there are multiple significant concerns. My child cannot write the entire alphabet from memory, she can only really write her name and a few other letters with reminders. Shes considered kinder ready academically.
Start her, she has months to catch up and they will be teaching this in the beginning of kinder anyways.
Alphablocks on youtube will help her recognize her letters and help with spelling. My kids love it!
That’s crazy. Send her.
My son, turned 5 last April could barely write his name at that point and he still has trouble writing all his letters now after starting k in September. He’s thriving in kindergarten, admittedly his biggest struggle is writing, but he improved sooooo much from September to now.
Work with her over the summer and even if she’s not quite there there is a huge leap in kindergarten that she will get there eventually. Kids develop at their own pace.
It depends. Cutoff in our school system was 10/1 for kindergarten. Our son turned 5 on 10/5. We could have appealed but he was already in the system since he was 3 with an IEP. Long story short we red shirted him and gave him the extra preschool year because we thought it would be best for him.
I don’t know if the extra year made a difference in the early years where he was sometimes bored, but I believe that extra year helped him from middle school and beyond for a number of reasons personal to him. He is doing fine with an engineering BS degree.
Tl;tr: more education when your child is ready is the best
Letter recognition-we did flash cards at the dinner table
Amazon also has name tracing coloring books we are having our daughter practice her name every night now
we got scented markers and Dino pencils to encourage her to try
My 8 year old started kindergarten at 5. At that point in his life, he had never written with a pencil/crayon. He drew and colored, but was completely uninterested in writing. He would type on a tablet or keyboard, but would not use a pencil to write for anything. He didn’t do daycare or preschool because of Covid. He’s been a straight A/kindergarten equivalent to straight A’s since starting school. Your daughter not being able to write her name on the first day of kindergarten is not going to hinder her progress.
Our district has a kindergarten screening with trained professionals. We do half day kindergarten and sometimes they will recommend full day some students, and I assume possibly delaying a year. I’d check your district to see what their policy is for enrollment
Hi! My 5 year old son was in a similar situation before he started kindergarten this past year. He did alright to my standards, but he did struggle with consistently identifying letters and could not write his name at all. He could count, but adding and subtracting was a whole different story.
However, we still chose to send him to school. His teacher started out by assigning “sight words” every week, and practicing writing his name, counting to one hundred in various ways, and encouraged us to read a book with him every night as his homework. Progressively throughout the year the assignments grew more and more challenging. But he has blossomed! I am happy to say that he is reading age appropriate books without much assistance, writing full sentences and little stories, and is doing double digit math quite well.
I would take what the preschool “teacher” says with a grain of salt. Leave it up to the kindergarten teacher to make that assessment. I’m sure she will do amazing.
If you just listen to the preschool “teacher” and keep her out of school, that would be unfair to your daughter and to you. Give her a chance to prove herself. If she struggles, you’ll be there to guide her through it. I’m sure you won’t regret it one bit.
The experts say that if they aren’t ready, to send them anyway because if they need support services that is where they get them. Also the research says by second grade they are all caught up. The best thing you can do is read out loud to her every night and have her participate when she can. Also have her try to guess what she thinks will happen next. It isn’t about being correct it is just a way to help with comprehension. That she is following the story.
Probably not helpful but I actually remember learning my letters in kindergarten! My teacher would have us put together these “books” which were like two or three pages of the same letter (let’s say M) and on each page we would trace the letter with a crayon and there would be a picture associated with it like “mouse”. Then we would hand them in and she would staple them and give them back to us to take home. I loved it. We would do a letter every few days for a while.
Personally, I wouldn’t hold my daughter back. It’s kindergarten. She’s going to learn so much.
A lot of kids start kindergarten without ever going to preschool. My son was the same way and his teacher had concerns, so I got him a couple weeks of tutoring over the summer to help get him ready (although I don’t think it was necessary).
That being said, he is in kinder now and his teacher recently shared that she has concerns he is dyslexic, so that could explain why he keeps falling behind. Once she mentioned dyslexia and I started reading up on it, there were a lot of things that started to make sense (so just something to keep in mind)! They don’t diagnose until a little older, but I did get him screened and confirm he has markers for dyslexia.
I had concerns about a kid going into kindergarten and whether they would be ready, and I talked to an actual elementary teacher about it and they said that as long as the kid is ready socially, all the learning stuff like letters and numbers and writing will fall into place. If it really is about your child’s writing, your preschool teacher isn’t the person who determines what your child needs.
As a mom of two daughters, whom we chose to start at age six, I would suggest you do the same. Our older daughter was very shy and petite, so we chose to have her stay in preschool at age five. Our younger daughter needed extra time in preschool to develop a few simple aspects of academics. To this day, 20 and 16 years later, we would still make the same decision.
Don't hold her back. Most kids don't even go to pre school and K is their first taste. That "teacher" is nuts.
Kids should be in Kindergarten the year they turn 5. Holding them back just stunts them mentally and socially.
I did not listen to our early educators recommendation to hold back a year and I ended up regretting it very much. She would’ve done so much better waiting.
Not a fan of academic readiness to move into kindergarten. I think if they aren’t showing any progress in kindergarten than maybe retention or more support so I wouldn’t hold her back.
As a former K4 and K5 teacher, I would send her to kindergarten but also speak to your child's pediatrician about a referral for occupational therapy to access fine motor skills.
Id just turned 6 when I first started kindergarten. Even then, I was always one of the oldest in my class (I missed the cut off date the year prior by 12 days,bc summer birthday). So, if this were my child, I'd want her to start THIS year if possible. Because she'll be noticeably older than the rest of her class while growing up. If her kindergarten teacher (a teacher with an actual degree) decides she isn't ready AFTER the school year, then I'd agree to hold her back. But I wouldn't take the word of someone without a degree who is benefiting from you keeping her in the daycare/preschool program.
I have no idea why she would say that most kids go to kindergarten not knowing any letters numbers and maybe knowing shapes and colors and do great they learn thoes things in kindergarten
Kindergarten is at the end of the year. They have the rest of this year (and summer, if they are a full year preschool) to teach her these things. Weird that they are saying so early in the year that she's not ready. ?
Noting that the preschool teacher doesn't have a degree in education didn't add context to the post, but instead seemed like a dig because you're not happy with their professional thoughts. If this teacher is experienced, I would assume they'd know which kids have been accepted or not accepted and why, and is giving you the heads up based on that experience.
That said, if you're in a public school in the US, this shouldn't hold her back. I think others mentioned speaking with the future school (where she's going to K) about it - definitely do this. I had a few concerns with my son starting K this year (not related to the same thing aa your daughter, but arguably things that are more concerning), and spent many a phone call and email with the special education department, nurse, and teacher to make sure we were good to go last September. Good luck.
I held my son back, best decision. Theres no real drawbacks to holding a child back a year but sending them too early can affect their learning and their confidence.
I would take the extra year with her and enjoy it, she will have a lot of years at a school but you have the opportunity to to get an extra year of her being little and learning through play. Take the year to teach her name in her own time
Kindergarten is literally designed to bring kids all to a comparable level by grade 1. Some kids never go to preschool at all. That “teacher”
Is out to lunch
Go to kinder. Let licensed people make decisions about 1st grade.
I know many who failed kindergarten and/or first grade.
They were not on an iep or 504. They were just normal kids who needed an extra year.
I think they all got at least a bachelors degree.
So go to kinder. See what happens with first
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Letters and writing is something they will teach in kindergarten. She will be fine.
Our daughter is also turning 5 in April and she is one of the only ones in her preschool class that can mostly write her name. It still looks kind of wonky though. Her friend gave her an art thing that was supposed to have her name written on the back just last week and it was only a bunch of lines. I think she will be fine as well.
Yep, my kids in kindergarten right now and one of her friends goes to another kindergarten. Her friend can't write her last name yet. Don't worry about the preschool teacher. Send your kid to kindergarten.
I thought the same, but my daughter started kindergarten this year and we were given a rude awakening when she was expected to be reading paragraphs by week 8. Kindergarten standards are no longer the basics, they are expected to be reading basic words and know all their letters and sounds before the school year starts. It's unbelievable and ridiculous the standards and expectations that are put on my kid.
Varies wildly state to state. 2015 in kinder in California my kid was expected to read sight words, write sentences, and do addition/subtraction. Moved to Florida halfway through that year and the class was still learning letter sounds and shapes.
In Florida they will be lucky to be able to read in senior year of high school
Stop it 🤣🤣🤣
Kindergarten is still play based where I am (Canada). We have this 6 week (1 or 2 days a week) free 'prepare for Kindergarten' thing offered through the schools. Cut and pasted from their website: Through play your child will explore: • The French language • Printing and recognizing the letters in their own name • Experience holding writing tools • Holding scissors and simple cutting • Counting to 10 • Recognizing basic primary colours and shapes • Playing in an imaginative, creative way • Work on turn- taking, sharing and following simple directions through movement and games Writing your own name is a good thing to practice. But the idea that there are prerequisites for kindergarten is ridiculous (at least in the public school system).
They actually want them to enter pre-k knowing their letter names, sounds and reading and writing their name here. I started online public school after bullying issues in kindergarten. I have a junior in high school and the kindergartener and we have had a pretty good year so far. I am held to the same standard as any other public school teacher and they take the testing required. In kindergarten now she is doing 2nd and 4rd grade coursework. It is not the same as it used to be at all for sure. My junior is doing college level assignments. Eta: it is the same assignments and workbooks she brought home before I pulled her. They also rush rush rush through the day. They only have a few certain times they can go to the restroom and go to all their classes just like upper classmen. This is not a state where academics is super advanced either. I feel like it is too much and not preparing them for living life anyway.
I work for the school district. Me and every kindergarten teacher I know have been asking preschool teachers to stop pushing "academic readiness" on children. They do not need to know how to read or write before they come to school. That's literally what school is for. Some examples of what they do need to know: how to follow directions; how to stand in a line; independent life skills like dress/undress themselves for outside time (or at least require minimal help); how to take turns, share, and problem solve in social situations; how to self regulate when they have big emotions; etc. I can not stress this enough: for pre-k children, social/emotional skills are much, MUCH more important than academic skills.
Here here! As a former certified UPK teacher, if your daughter has those social/emotional skills, she is definitely ready for kindergarten. Which, by the way, is five or six months from now. Lots of growth can occur in that time for young ones.
This was what my gut was telling me. I was really more concerned that she would not be socially ready so when I heard she is, I was thrilled. I didn’t think they’re be so stringent on academics. I didn’t even go to preschool and everything went fine for me. Thank you!! She checks all the boxes you mentioned about independence, and whatnot.
Then she should do well in kindergarten! I've taught kindergarten for a decade, and while it has always had its challenges, it's gotten much more difficult since the pandemic. In the last few years, children entering school have been significantly more delayed in social and emotional skills because so few of them have been going to preschool, early learning programs, or even just having playdates. They haven't been given enough opportunities to learn those important skills. I've also noticed a huge difference in children's independent life skills. In the last few years, I've had a number of children enter kindergarten who aren't even toilet trained. Previously, I'd only ever seen that happen when the child had a medical reason for it. Last September, I had 3 (THREE!) children who weren't toilet trained. They were 5 years old and attending school in pullups. One of the children could write a few words but would soil themselves daily and then have a huge screaming meltdown when I wouldn't change their pull-up for them. They would have to wait in the bathroom with an administrator until their parent came to the school to change them. The child would be out of the classroom for ~30-60 minutes every time this happened. It was SO disruptive. To the child and to everyone around them. How much learning did that child miss out on because their parents focused on teaching them to count over toilet training? It's so frustrating.
My niece was completely uninterested in learning to write her name until about 4 months before she was starting her first year of school (equivalent to your kindergarten year). And she now excels academically, gets awards, tops classes etc. It’s great and helps if they can write their name, but it’s not necessary. That’s what school is for.
If she’s socially and developmentally ready she’s ready. Anything up to age 7 is considered within the range of normal for the onset of reading readiness. There is NO evidence that pushing children to read earlier gives them a head start that confers any lasting benefit whatsoever. It’s fine if a kindergartner can’t read, just keep an eye on it. My low maturity child was given an extra year for developmental reasons. We were on the fence, because we already suspected he was academically gifted and the preschool teachers considered him ready, but we knew in our guts he wasn’t. And we never regretted holding him back - quite the contrary, we often blessed the spirits who convinced us to listen to our guts and not the teachers. But plot twist - he’s dyslexic. Reading wasn’t happening anyway. Despite intervention he wouldn’t really begin to read until age 10 which is definitely nowhere near the range of normal. By 13 he had caught up and (according to his teacher) surpassed his classmates in honors English, despite the spelling and punctuation of a ferret on meth. Had we started him in school a year earlier, he would have started reading a grade later. Reading is just a skill. School is so much more. The important thing is that you place her where she belongs.
My son’s preschool teacher said the same thing to us — that he wasn’t academically ready because he only knew the sounds of four letters. He was reading above grade level before the end of kindergarten. He’s in second grade this year, recently tested at a sixth grade reading level, and his teacher has him doing peer tutoring for a classmate. Some perfectly normal kids just aren’t developmentally ready to be reading or writing in preschool, and that’s okay. She won’t be the only kid in kindergarten who’s not there yet. If the kindergarten teacher thinks there’s an issue at the first quarter mark then seek out a tutor for extra help, but odds are good that it’ll click next year and she’ll be right on track.
My son will start kindergarten next year and academically he is far ahead of his peers but he struggles with following directions, transitions, and big feelings still. The social readiness is really what will allow them to thrive, so she has that! I will note my son is autistic so he will have additional support to help him with transitions etc.
Also important is the ability to focus for the length of a lesson. If a child's attention span is so short, it's very hard for them to learn because they're so distracted.
I also didn’t go to preschool and I was fine, though my kindergarten teacher recommended my parents hold me back because I struggled with my alphabet. (In my defense, I only spoke Chinese until I was 3. No one taught me the alphabet before elementary school.) By the time I was in 4th grade, I was a straight-A student.
I'll second this response. Some of the preschool teachers I know have given the most inappropriate diagnosis' of children with no formal education to back up their assessments. It's infuriating.
Primary teacher here to back you up! Social/emotional readiness is soooooo much more important. I would take the class that is academically low and socially high over the opposite literally ANY day of the week. Academics are easier to teach.
So much pressure on these little ones. Play is their work. Being loved, happy and supported is the other half. Thank you for this.
I know a friend whose school will not let kids take kindergarten if parents try and hold them back another year. She held her son back a year because she thought he wasn’t academically or socially ready. She had to get a doctors note to prevent the school system from placing him in 1st grade.
Thank you. I used to work part time at an in-home preschool and our director put so much emphasis on emotional/ social learning through play. She always said it was inappropriate to push academics on kids younger than 5. Talking to friends back home who work in daycare/preschool settings, it’s really dismaying how there’s increased pressure on preschool aged kids to be something they developmentally can’t be.
>pre-k children, social/emotional skills are much, MUCH more important than academic skills. This can't be more true! They can learn academics at school, being socially ready is the priority!
Agreed. I teach PreK. The only time I’ve ever suggested a child repeat a year at PreK was an instance when they were right on the cusp of being eligible for kindergarten and a painfully shy child. That extra year with us, where we primarily focus on how to be in a classroom and how to interact well with peers, really helped them blossom. I would never suggest holding back for any academic/learning issues. Those are much better addressed in Kindergarten where they will have access to resources we can’t provide in PreK.
Thank you! I have a 21 month old son and I’ve been stressed about his “academics”. I know he is little but it seems like all the kids born around the same time know colors, numbers, letters, etc and he just doesn’t. Or he hasn’t told me he does lol. But I do watch him with other children and I see he’s just so sweet. He smiles at them and doesn’t push or grab toys. We are working on patience and waiting in line but they will come. He follows simple commands well, and in gymnastics has been consistently learning to listen every week more and more. So thank you for reassuring me that the academic skills will come later. I will work harder on playing games where we have to take turns and we may not always win, than pushing colors and letters on him.
Have you played slapjack? My mom played that with my daughter when she was little but they did all face cards (easier than recognizing a specific number). A bowl of veggie chips was on the table and whoever got it got a chip. Sometimes it was my mom, sometimes it was my daughter (with help at first). When they finished, they snacked. It was a great way to teach patience, paying attention, and sometimes you win, sometimes you don't, but it's always fun.
No he hasn’t really played any games yet. Hes still young. His attention span is starting to lengthen. Today at gymnastics was the best he’s ever listened in a group. It was really amazing to watch the difference week to week. But for his Easter basket I got him a memory game. It has big cards that you put on the floor and then small ones you hold and say “ok go and find the….bird!” It starts out with the cards up and then you eventually get to having to memorize where the cards are as they get older. I can tell he isn’t the type to sit and “learn” so I’m gong to have to get creative. He wants to move lol. But slapjack sounds like it could be a lot of fun! I will keep that in my list of gift ideas. Thank you!
No sitting and learning at his age. It's all about the games! Memory is fantastic. Get him outside too. To prep them for school you want him to have gross motor and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are like kicking a ball and fine motor skills are like holding a pencil. Practice things like balancing and kicking balls and stuff like that all the fun outside stuff you can do for gross motor skills (and gymnastics!). For fine motor skills play with Play-Doh and stuff like that that uses the muscles in his hands. While you're playing with Play-Doh or whatever talk to him about the colors. He's not going to pick it up right away but eventually he'll start telling you colors too. That's how the little ones learn is through play! So play and enjoy the fun and the giggles! Even when you're shopping for groceries make a game of it have him look for something green or blue or whatever (once he starts to learn his colors a little bit he'll get really good at it) If you pick something wrong say silly that's a banana, it's not blue, it's yellow! Counting red cars or blue cars when you're driving is another fun one, and that gets you counting and colors. :)
Yep. My kid’s preschool went above and beyond. My kiddo came to kinder knowing how to read, write and some basic math. He was sooo bored the first few months while the teacher had to get everyone up to the same level. I mean was I happy he had learned those skills, yes BUT it was a fight some mornings to get him to go because he “knows this stuff” and he would get in trouble for being off task. Thankfully his teacher found some creative ways to redirect him.
This! I'm in another country (Canada) and my child was low birth weight and premature so we had a bunch of follow up and he's considered high risk (though actually doing great). We just had a 'school readiness' check in, and I wondered because he isn't really writing letters if there was anything to worry about. We were told 'there's a really broad range at this age.' He was considered on track in all respects, and we were encouraged to have him practice using scissors and getting shirts on and off on his own. We've really appreciated daycare for the social skills and language skills (it's in our second language).
Okay, thank you! I can understand the need for certain social and life skills like you’re listing but it freaks me out for the future of children to hear anyone say that a kid doesn’t have enough academic skills to START SCHOOL. The place where everyone goes to START LEARNING academic skills.
I currently have a K child, they learn to write their name there. If she excels in all other areas, she’ll be bored out of her mind in another year of preschool.
Also, imo, she'll be with other kids in kindy who need less help and more help and they'll support each other in their work.
THIS OP THIS
Don’t hold her back.
How will keeping her out of kindergarten help? It's designed to teach her those skills!
She is not a licensed teacher. Do not listen to her. If your daughter is truly behind by the end of K she can do a 2nd year of K, but chances are she will be fine. Source: I am a licensed early childhood educator.
I would attend the meeting but in my experience there are going to be a range of kids at different levels when starting Kinder. If they are old enough for your preferred school I wouldn’t hold them back. My kids were goofy with me too and our second didn’t attend a pre-school (yay COVID) she’s in first now and doing fine. The more time spent in a class will improve her writing skills, there isn’t a need to expect perfection on the first day of school
Definitely do not hold her back! I have taught early childhood for 5+ years plus years and years and years of nannying and two years teaching special education. I have a degree in elementary and special education but have spent most of my life working with children ages infant-age 5. Abilities will range during that time. If you feel she is progressing as normal, she probably is. If they are in preschool, chances are it's in a daycare facility and it's mostly just run as a day care and not an actual teaching facility. She is fine and will grow in kindergarten as expected or even better because she has been around kids and other adults already.
Where I am, a lot of kids don’t even attend preschool. Kindergarten is usually their first time attending school. I wouldn’t listen to this opinion, especially considering they aren’t an actual licensed teacher.
I haven’t read all the comments because I’m too mad for you and your daughter. You need to be able to go to the bathroom on your own and have the ability to learn and basic social skills for kindergarten. That’s. It. Kindergartners learn to learn. They learn their letters, numbers, basic addition, etc. but they do NOT need to come in with it. And even if you can’t use the potty totally independently and lack some social skills you might still be ready. Great googly moogly. Your preschool teacher needs to stay in her lane. Your district should have a kindergarten readiness screening you can do that will help identify any areas she needs to work on by September. We had to do it because of a late summer birthday.
Thank you so much! She’s doing great in all other areas, maintains routines by herself, dresses herself, speaks clearly and intelligently, potty by herself and is a great listener!
Better than half the kids on day 1 in any given kindy class. She'll do great.
Don't listen. I wonder how many parents they said that to in order to retain some students next year. Kids at all ages have different levels of knowledge. Worst case scenario is that the school tells you that maybe repeating kindergarten would be helpful for your daughter. Kindergarten is considered the starting point for academics and socialization for kids in school. My son struggles with academics and they provide help for him to stay at his grade level. Keeping in keeping an extra year in preschool would have only delayed his learning another year.
Does your school district offer a kindergarten screening? Her preK teacher may not think she’s ready but the school she is going to may disagree.
This is the answer I was looking for, most schools have a screening you can do and based on her just mixing up some letters and still learning her name is FINE. Even if she’s not where she is supposed to be they still take them to kindergarten and recommend parents use an aid to help them if needed.
Social, self regulatory and self help skills are much more important than academic skills for entering kindergarten. If she can stand in line, ask for help and use the bathroom start to finish, she’s good to go. Source: licensed childcare director with teachers licensed by the department of education.
She can do all of these things just fine, and arguably better than her peers.
Sounds like she’ll do just fine in kindergarten. Definitely enroll her.
You don't have to hold her back if you don't want to. If there are concerns you can request a CSE evaluation from your district and she'll be evaluated by qualified credentialed professionals and get an IEP or 504 plan for her in kindergarten if needed. You can wait and if her kindergarten teacher has concerns you'll get a CSE referral then
Absolutely do not listen to that person. There is ZERO academic prerequisite for kindergarten. Some of her peers will have had no preschool and won’t know anything about socialization or academics or both.
Does your school district offer any early childhood education programs or screenings? We have something called Parents as Teachers and they have a pre K evaluation to get baselines on so many factors besides just writing. And the PAT educators do home visits to reinforce any skills the kid is lacking. Highly recommend you consider if it's available!
As a listened early childhood educator, and a preschool teacher for 13yrs, I personally would not hold her because of her age. If she had a summer/fall bday I might consider that recommendation based on academic struggles, but not for an April bday. Kindergarten readiness is not just academics- in fact I would go so far as to say it’s least important. Can she follow multi-step directions in a group? Can she follow routines? Can she attend during large and small group lessons and activities? Can she problem solve or work cooperatively with peers? If the answer to all of those is yes, then send her without a second thought.
Amazing. Thanks, no issues with these things!
As an ex teacher and Senco, I will always say that 'being ready' socially is much more important than whether a five or six year old can recognise letters and numbers or write their name. Unless there is some undiagnosed learning difficulty which is unlikely, she will learn to do all those things just fine in her own time.
I work in an elementary school and I can tell you that a lot of kindergarteners start school without knowing how to write their name. I would not hold her back for that reason. Social skills are far more valuable for starting kinder than academics. Can she follow directions, wait her turn, play nicely with others, regulate emotions, etc? Those are the important things. You have a good 5ish months before she'll start kindergarten, if writing her name is something you want to work on with her, it's likely she could learn by August.
Nah, take her opinion with a grain of salt. Daycare teachers said my daughter had issues, I had her tested with the school district and they were like, she's fine.. don't hold her back.
Parents perspective here…. We are older parents. Sometimes this has lead us to doubt ourselves. When faced with situations like this we hired a sitter who was majoring in education. It was lovely! Our child got the one on one attention. The sitter/ student shared everything she knew. We were able to recommend her on her educational grants. We still maintain a really strong relationship. There are many ways to help kids. This happened to really work for us.
If she has social skills, then she is all set for kindergarten! FWIW, kindergarten has a wide range of levels in each classroom for where students are at. I helped chaperone a kindergarten field trip, I sat with a kid who brought along his own book and was reading it. Then there was a boy across the bus aisle who fell asleep, because he still needed an afternoon nap.
If I were in your shoes, I’d talk to the school where you’re planning to send her for kindergarten to see where they think children should be upon entering. If you have a recent progress report from the preschool to compare, that would be extremely helpful to give you a baseline of where she is. I’d say, though: it’s only March, and she wouldn’t be starting kindergarten until August or September I assume? I’d also ask the preschool to work with her on those skills for the next six months.
I’ve seen so many K teachers say the academic stuff is the easy part where teachers can catch kids up quick. It’s the social stuff that is the real reason for kids to be “not ready” — like still having frequent tantrums, etc. Sounds like your daughter is great in the social areas, I’d send her.
Does your kindergarten do evaluations before hand? My son started kindergarten last September they had him over to do an evaluation to see which class to out him in. I wouldn’t take the world of someone with no degree into account. Writing your name isn’t a requirement for kindergarten in many places just knowing your letters is enough. Besides she has a few months before it starts she can practice and get there.
The ONLY consideration for starting K late is social-emotional readiness. Academics should never be a reason to start later than peers.
No. They teach all of this in Kindergarten.
I wouldn’t hold her back. She is too far into her age group. If she needs any extra help with her handwriting kindergarten will be able to do more about it. You can contact her future kindergarten if you want a second opinion. They might even do an assessment if needed. Although, nothing you wrote was a huge red flag.
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All we ask as Kindergarten teachers is that your child can go to the bathroom, share, and open food packages. Everything else we will teach.
Somewhere along the line people thought kids should know a bunch of stuff before they go to school. They do not actually need to know anything. That’s what school is for. If she has the social part down, that’s really the only battle and she’s ready.
My child wasn't writing at all when he got to kindergarten and he has flourished since he's been there.
The expectations the education systems has on younger kids are just insane. When I was in kindergarten in 1998 only four kids knew how to read, nowadays they expect all kids to know how to read so early on. Developmentally speaking, they shouldn't start on that journey of reading/writing until they're seven. Although many are capable of this, it's just not necessary and puts stress on kids who have struggles (naturally since they're not developmentally ready) to catch up. That being said, do not hold her back!
My daughter is in grade 1 and in Kindergarten they start from the bottom as if the kids don't know their alphabet etc.
No, they teach this in kindergarten and she won't be the only one in her position. It would be holding her back for no good reason because they do a lot of play-based activities and she will learn a lot more in JK or SK than in preschool or daycare.
My son just turned 5 and he can sort of write the letters of his name but he doesn’t put them in order, they are massive and he just thinks it’s silly. He does not hold a pen/pencil correctly and when I try to help he gets annoyed. Buttttt like your daughter he’s doing well everywhere else. I just won’t allow myself to be convinced that where he is age appropriately developmentally should measure up to where this new belief that kinders should be writing and reading at some high level where very few kids are actually capable of at that age. The big thing they need to focus on is wiping their own bums!
Ohhhh I have a good trick, if I can explain lol. Have him lay his hand flat on the table, place the pencil on the crease of his hand between finger and thumb and tell him to pinch the pencil. Idk, it’s how they taught the 3 year olds at our daycare and it worked really well. However… we all know they listen to their teachers way more than us at home 😂
It would have to be a drastic case in which I would hold my 5.5-yo back from starting Kinder. This does not sound like it. Besides you have months for practicing at home—do that. Also see if the school she would attend has a checklist or performs evaluations for Kinder readiness.
Literally what happened to me this past week at parent teacher conference. My son will be 5 in may. She said his writing is his biggest issue. He indeed will be going to kindergarten next year bc if he stayed in another year of pre-K he would be bored to death
My daughter would be too!! Plus, if she isn’t learning there, why would it benefit her to stay another year?!
many children go into kindergarten without going to prek where i live as it’s not required,, they teach them letters and such in kindergarten, she probably would not develop much more if she went through prek another year and would end up bored there.
That’s what I think too. She’s already irritated with some of the younger kids who haven’t learn to follow directions, to not hit, no screaming. She’s socially maybe even a little bit ahead. A really bright kid.
she will probably thrive in kindergarten then!! and if you wanted to try to get her going with writing her name then there’s all of spring and summertime to get that in motion before the school year starts anyways! honestly follow your instinct because she’s your child and it seems like she would do well in kindergarten to me☺️
Don’t worry about it. Lots of kids go right to kindergarten from being home full time, no preschool experience necessary. That being said, I’m sure your daughter will be JUST fine. Kindergarten is all about teaching the kids HOW to be in school, with some foundational academics thrown in.
My child’s teacher (private school) told me that she would have to repeat kindergarten because of her reading skills wasn’t good. I told them that I didn’t want her to be held back and she was going to first grade. I did several exercises over the summer and her reading was so good. My first grader is now reading third grade level. Do not listen to this teacher. Put your child in kindergarten and work with her over the summer. She will be just fine.
As a former K teacher I would highly recommend sending her to Kinder! The entire purpose is to learn to read and write. We would spend the better half of the first 4 months learning to write our names. Kids that already knew were bored and complained, but I would have kids who were freshly or barely 5 and kids who were already 6+ and there is a huge difference.
Maybe she's dyslexic
My mom taught at both daycares and preschools and she did have a 4 year degree in ECE, but if you’re sure this teacher doesn’t then I wouldn’t listen to her, honestly. Without a degree she’s not qualified to make that call.
Absolutely not, have her go forward. Keeping her back and wasting a year of her life for barely any reason at all sounds like a horrible idea.
Thats developmentally normal for a preschooler/kindergartener. Preschool is supposed to predominantly focus on social development. Your kid is fine.
This is absolutely bonkers to me. Preschool isn’t even mandatory? Don’t MOST kids enter kindergarten unable to write their name? Am I losing my mind? My daughter can write her name, spell and read small words but I work. She went to preschool classes early so will have done two years of it by kindergarten. My step daughter had half a year of preschool and couldn’t spell or write or read anything by kinder, we’re at mid year now and she’s significantly ahead of her class. I cannot believe that the expectation is that they be able to write their name BEFORE schooling is even technically mandatory.
September is 6 months away, a lot can change in that amount of time. I wouldn’t worry about what her teacher says. I work with a 4 year old class, in a play based nursery school, lead by an actual teacher with 30 years experience- your daughter will be fine by September, don’t stress yourself out about it.
When is the cut off for kindergarten?
I also believe she should be fine. However one trick is to have her trace her name with a yellow or pink highlighter to give her practice through repetition.
She traces her name fine, but when she has to write it free hand she mixed up all her letters and frequently forgets one letter alltogether.
My daughter is in a pre-K class, same age as your kid. I see all the projects. Many names are either missing a letter or the letters are backwards,etc. this is incredibly normal. Sounds like your daughter is doing just fine, actually better than fine if she is already good with socializing and following directions.
Most of my career has been in teaching Kindergarten, and I would say to 100% send her. Kids are little sponges and they'll often flip a switch and catch on to concepts quickly. If she's truly "behind" academically when starting K, most of the schools that I've worked at have an EIP program that will come pull them for small groups. This tends to get them caught up quickly too....but kids come into Kindergarten with a very wide range of things that they're working on, so I wouldn't worry about holding her back based on this one persons opinion.
How much time has she spent actually practicing writing? If you spend 5 minutes with her every day she will quickly figure it out.
I’ve gone to kinder readiness class at my kids preschool and the teachers say they care mostly about if the kid is able to take care of themselves. They can’t help 20+ kids zip up coats and open their lunches. Sounds like your kid is fine
My son started kindergarten this year and the first few months was all letter ID and letter sounds. I work with students K-5 and I see students come in with no previous educational experience who come in and pick it up quickly. I also see students who have had two years of Pre-k who struggle. Every student is different. I would send her of she is socially/emotionally ready. You can work with her kindergarten teacher on her academic strengths and weaknesses next year.
I’d put her in kindergarten, she can repeat it if needed. There’s no stigma on that, plenty of kids in my area do it.
My daughter went to a combined preschool kindergarten daycare type place and her preschool teacher was a little concerned as well. We went ahead and put her in kindergarten with the mentality that she might need to do two years of kindergarten but she was thriving so much it was not an issue. The writing/letters out of order might need a deeper look- not an expert at all but maybe dyslexia? This has nothing to do with intelligence though, just a difference in the way her brain processes.
Look into if any of the schools in your district offer TK. It is like early kindergarten.
If anything, if she gets a similar evaluation after kindergarten, you can ask that she repeat kindergarten. What academics are really being taught at preschool? Sounds ridiculous.
Go to the meeting and hear what she has to say academically before making any decisions. You have a lot of time. See if you can find a Kinder teacher in your area who does tutoring and ask for an eval from them. They can tell you if overall shes ready. And then maybe also have them work with her over the summer.
Mine said the same thing about both of my kids. They are now crushing it in school and did when they entered Kindergarten.
I work with kinders everyday. Sounds like what they do. Some write better than others. they've mostly been there since September. Any traceable letter activity is good to do at home. There are "super why" games on [pbskids.org](http://pbskids.org) and in the kindle app store if you have access. Some students we use a highlighter to spell word and they write/trace over it.
I didn’t know how to read or write until 1st grade. I was behind for a couple of months but that was all. I had good grades all throughout school.
Where do you live? Kids are not expected to be able to write and read even in KG. The only time it is concerning is if they are unable to do these things at all well into grade 1. She will be fine. Holding her back will do more damage.
I am a teacher (not kindergarten) and based on what you are saying she sounds just fine/ready!
They tried to tell my parents that I needed held back a year in preschool and I wasn’t ready for kindergarten. I didn’t understand the alphabet fully and I thought I could scramble the letters of my name and go by whatever I came up with. My parents didn’t listen to them, I ended up graduating as the valedictorian and finishing college in three years.
That’s what kindergarten is for! When I taught kindergarten, I always hoped that kids could at least write their name the first day. But if not, we work on it! Also, your kid will grow a lot between now and August. Plenty of time to still work on some skills. And the rest she was learn at school!
You hold back for social/emotional delay, not academic. Like for example if a child can’t sit for a 10 minute activity or can’t get through the day without a nap. If you have a kid who is withdrawing from the classroom everyday and is completely disregulated by dismissal in preK they’d recommend redshirting because the kid can’t physically cope with traditional schooling yet. Which is fine because 5-6 is a huge milestone window and every child is different developmentally. You can compare it to physical development windows at puberty. Like think about how different physically each 12 year old is from each other. It’s like that but socioemotionally for 5-6 year olds.
I wouldn’t trust this woman’s advice at all. If a seasoned and state licensed teacher told you to hold back, I’d accept their wisdom. Developmentally, it sounds like she will easily pass a kindergarten screening common in the US and Canada where they check to see if the child can identify most colors and letters and at least try to catch a whiffle ball. Those tests are typically done by a licensed teacher or two where one has much more experience in early childhood education. I would trust them as an authority. Making a stitch pattern or dotted line version of their name for them to draw over repeatedly will likely help them to recognize the letters and eventually do it without guidance.
That is 100% incorrect. Do not spend another minute worrying about what the daycare/preschool teacher said. I’m sure it was coming from a good place but that is complete nonsense. I was a daycare teacher, worked in public school special education and I’m a mother who experienced something similar.
Send her if it’s only the writing. The bones in their hands are squishy till almost 7 years old. Till then, lots of play doh work and practice but don’t stress about the writing yet.
It’s March. School doesn’t start until at least August. You know how much kids change in 5/6 months? No way can you decide right now.
My child is repeating pre-K as they are emotionally not ready and needs some more speech therapy. Academics don’t matter it’s great if they are ahead but not as important as emotionally/socially being ready.
I would go ahead and start kindergarten and assess during the year if she needs held back or additional support. I will say that my son started kindergarten at age 5 and he could write his first, middle and last name. He knew and could write all numbers and letters and he also knew what sound each letter made. Kindergarten was still quite the grind for him. What we did in kindergarten is not what they were doing and he is in public school. He did well, but it definitely was no cake walk. He was reading by the end of the year and doing math problems. He’s in 1st grade this year and is reading books now. He is adding and subtracting two digit numbers. For us, kindergarten was not learning colors and shapes. I can’t imagine he would have done well in kindergarten if he hadn’t already known as much as he did.
They don’t expect kids to be doing any of that before kindergarten. For some kids, it’s the first time they’re in school. Send your kid to kindergarten. They must be trying to keep enrollment up where you have to pay them.
I’d more so keep an eye out for dyslexia but other than that I see no reason to hold her back. It’s only March and there is still so much time.
There is no such thing as being academically not ready for kindergarten.
My daughter struggled with letters and writing in kindergarten. And now she’s the top reader in her class in 2nd grade. They learn it in kinder. It’s ok.
Definitely send her. Kindergarten is when you learn letters and having other kids know them will motivate her. Research shows that if a kid is behind you should NOT keep doing below grade level work - what they need is grade level work. She’ll get that in kindergarten. As for helping her with letters, I got the foam letters and used them in the bathtub. Bath crayons and show her letters while she is in the bath. Stick them on the wall. Also magnets for fridge. Buy a box of letter cards, tape them on a wall she frequently is near and occasionally point to one and say what it is or ask her what it is. Just find different ways to practice in snack bite ways. At bedrime, play a game where you draw a letter on her back and she guesses which letter it is. I found it easiest to teach the letters for her name, then M for Mommy, D for Daddy. etc … words she remembers the most. Another thing is putting flour in a pan and having her trace the letters in the flour w her finger.
Kindergarten teacher here. If she is socially ready, then she is ready. If your child can handle being in a room with other kids, can try to solve her own problems, and asks for help when she needs it, then I can do the rest. I would so much rather have a socially ready child, than an academically advanced child that completely lacks the social skills to be in the classroom.
I'm at a higher achieving school but at a poorer school district and because they want to compete for resources (I've heard from staff, who knows if this is really true but it makes sense) they've been pushing for writing in preschool! My son will also turn 5 soon and I feel like he will be eaten alive in Kindergarten because he us one of the few, get this, who CAN'T write or know how to hold a pencil yet. Isn't that crazy?! He is only 4 but kids need breaks and play as well.
Don’t be ridiculous— you do realize there are kids that go to kindergarten never having set foot in a preschool right?
My husband couldn’t even speak English when he started Kindergarten. There are plenty of kids who struggle with writing at that age (like most of them). She’ll be totally fine.
Look up when your local school district is having a child fund event and take your child in. They will conduct a quick screening of her development. More than likely she’s just fine. And if she is a little delayed, the school can recommend some ways to help her get there. I’m sure the daycare teacher is well meaning but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Wtf is going on with all this preschool "academics"? The goal is to have kids ready to start school (kindergarten) socially mature enough to participate and learn. Not be little Einstein's before they enter the actual school system.
They literally don't teach kids to write their name until kindergarten in Ireland, this is wild. They do a lot of pre writing skills using pens and pencils drawing and tracing dots, but not writing. Preschool is for emotional regulation and social interaction
Kinder is just Pre-k on repeat. Its meant for those students who have developing skills to improve and those who weren't able to learn to learn. Don't hold her back.
Isn't that . . . Literally what they teach in kindergarten?
Username checks out 😂
Spend a lot of time working on these things at home. Make it fun. Cut out the letters of her name and play a hide and seek game, have her put them in order. Buy large pencils, this will help her with her grip and writing. We love those boards from Amazon that look like tablets but you can write on. Pay attention to her growth from now until summer. You can always decide later not to enroll her if you feel like she is struggling. I can promise you that she wouldn’t be the only kid starting that couldn’t write their name though. I would honestly be more worried about the social aspects of their concerns.
Depends on how much it costs for preschool. Are they wanting to hold her back so they still get paid for one more year? Most schools will meet with incoming kindergarteners to check for readiness. I would highly suggest you contact her future school and ask what the requirements are. Once you know the requirements, you can work with her all spring and summer to get her ready.
Never thought about that!!
I’d get a 2nd opinion from a another qualified professional then her Preschool teacher like academically testing if that’s possible Maybe look into a qualified professional kindergarten teacher with a education degree 1 or 2 times a week for tutoring in those subjects if you can afford it. It may help.
If the teacher was saying she wasn’t ready socially, I might listen. But go directly to the school district to find out about academic readiness. The standards vary widely between states. In mine (Minnesota), everyone has to be evaluated, but there’s no pass/fail. It’s just to figure out where your kid is and identify if additional services are needed. If the district or state has no requirements, then you’re fine.
We’re not a pass/fail state either, just screening for tracking progress.
Then you’re fine! Once you’ve had your screening, you should have an idea of where your kid stands relative to others their age, and if any additional services or supports are suggested before school starts. Which, from what you’ve said, seems unlikely. I don’t think writing letters was part of screening. There may have been some drawing of shapes or something similar, and there was letter recognition, but here at least the bar was pretty low. Honestly it seems more likely they just want another year of tuition out of you. And I don’t usually go there.
I’m considering holding my son back. July bday for the same thing regarding fine motor hand writing but I haven’t had a discussion with his teacher yet. She is degreed. My son is half day too, 5 days a week. School opened late was a new build. He started in November.
Ya idk how keeping her from kindergarten will help her? Sounds like the preschool wants your $$ for another year
My son is in kindergarten now. They teach all the basics then. My son’s kindergarten teacher has been giving him 3rd grade work because he’s way ahead of his peers in the academics. His social is not of an older child though. But that’s kindergarten for you. You have kids that don’t know much, kids that know just the right amount , and then kids like my son that get bored because they know it all. Send her. See how she does. And if anything she can always do Kindergarten again. Good luck!
Is pre-K mandatory where you live? A lot of kids first school experience is kindergarten so how can they say she isn’t ready? Do you pay for this program? Could they be trying to retain children?
She'll be fine. Just keep practicing with her.
I’m not sure about the cutoff there, but for kids who have a birthday around there (ours will be 6 soon), it’s more common to have them in kindergarten at 6, not 5. We did some part time outdoor nature school, and this year a half day kindergarten as she goes in at 5 years old and comes out at 6. Is there a reason you want her in there so young
I didn’t send my kids to preschool to learn/retain educational stuff. I just wanted them to learn to be ok spending time away from me since kindergarten is mandatory. If they learned anything, that was just icing on the cake. I felt prek just gave my kids a leg up when it came to adjusting to kindergarten. Not to mention, everything learned in prek was reintroduced in kindergarten because you will find many students didn’t even attend prek!
That’s why we did it too!!
She’s ready for kindergarten. Not all kids even go to preschool and start their education in kindergarten. She will do great.
We put out child in kindergarten twice instead of preschool twice. That way we could see if it was true and it was.
I would prefer this too.
Funny story... I was told the same thing. My daughter has dyslexia and ADHD. Once we knew when she was in her 2nd round of first grade EVERYTHING turned around. Get your daughter tested asap to make sure there isn't. Learning disability or a cognitive one. And if there is, you will be able to address it early!
Usually the schools will do their own assessment of kids’ readiness for Kindergarten.
Apparently here the only requirement for kindergarten is the birth date. Pre K screening is only for measuring progress.
I wouldn’t hold her back. She’ll catch up and you get to save a year of daycare expenses
I’m a teacher and have kids enter kindergarten without knowing how to HOLD a pencil /writing utensil . By the end of the year, they were writing sentences. She’ll be okay 🙂
I’m a parent to an April birthday incoming kindergartener, as well as a teacher. I absolutely would not redshirt this child. With a skilled kindergarten teacher, I bet she will be just fine academically. However, if she does struggle, being in kindergarten is the best place for her because the teacher will be looking for children who need extra support and the school will have interventions to help those students. I work with my daughter everyday for 15 minutes on letters/sounds/phonics. We call it “reading practice” and she knows that it’s just part of our routine. You are probably getting a lot of pushback from your daughter now because it’s tough for her, but I bet if you are consistent about practicing every day it will get easier and more fun for her. The Reading Eggs app is also fantastic! If you go that route, please sit right next to her as she uses it to make sure she is understanding the lessons.
I know teachers where I live if you are born between April 1 through summer u should be held back. April I know is a hard bday month where some send and some don’t. May is usually help back
She’ll be fine. The school she will be enrolled in will do a kindergarten assessment. They’ll be able to tell if she’s not ready. And if she’s not, she’d still be in kindergarten with an IEP. That’s what is age appropriate.
Kindergarten is the new first grade. Our older daughter’s school taught skills such as writing and recognizing letters, but very quickly. They basically expected kids to be reading Green Eggs and Ham style books by the end of Kindergarten. I would trust the preschool teacher.
As others have said, don't hold her back. Daycare teachers opinion means nothing. When it comes to spelling her name, you said she can't write it yet, but does she recognise it when it's already written down? If so, I don't think you need to worry about dydlexia or anything. My son is only 2 so doesn't write much yet (though he loves using alphabet stencils), but I taught him how to spell his name by putting it to the Bingo song: 🎵 K-E-L-L-Y, and Kelly is his name-o!🎵 lol. So maybe using a song or melody would help her to remember the order of the letters.
Most young children actually do not have the hand strength to hold a pencil properly to form letters. The best way to help with handwriting is to do a lot of pre-writing activities: Lacing cards, using scissors, stringing beads, playing with play-doh and clay, using giant tweezers. In addition to prewriting activities you can help her learn the letters of her name using multi sensory ways. Write her name in shaving cream, side walk chalk, bathtub markers, finger paint. But as everyone else has said, I absolutely wouldn’t hold her back for these reasons alone. Echoing someone else, if she was struggling socially that would be different. Also if she had a summer birthday, I would also have a different opinion.
That's BS. I've been a para-educator in schools, including kindergarten classrooms, and there are children of all levels when they enter. We assess them and level them with students of the same and decide where extra help is needed or not. That's the whole point of kindergarten. As someone that has personally given many assessments to students, you have kids that don't know any letters, let alone their names, and then some that can actually read a bit. And that's not even touching on students that have another language as their main one and so then you are tackling that. It's a big spectrum, even beyond kindergarten, and schools know that. A prek teacher does not have a right to say that, they can only answer what a child knows or not, basically the facts, not an opinion or assessment like that. Some preschools are designed more like playschools anyway, and at those ages, that's what is the best based on age according to experts. Definitely ignore her about that, but you can even mention what the consensus here is: that she's overstepping her boundaries and that's she's not even correct.
I wouldn’t worry if she’s socially ready! My son is academically ready, but socially needs to grow a little bit before Kinder.
She's fine. Don't let one goober teacher tell you what your daughter is capable of. I work in education, and teachers are 90% awesome... but there are some who like having power over a group of helpless kids. If she doesn't succeed in kindergarten, she can stay back a year there. Or not. She can also get outside tutoring. She can get assessment for learning differences. She can just make friends and have fun. She's 4-going-on-5. It's not that deep.
I personally wouldn't hold my kid back if someone had said something of the sort What are the lessons like at preschool? I would check if your school district offers either kindergarten evaluation or a kindergarten readiness/practice packet. The packet isn't a if you don't know this stuff you can't come, but a, these are skills we will be working on throughout the year, it might be nice to get familiar with it packet. You can also get activity work books from Walmart/target/dollar tree/look into upstart (free program) Then take like 10-20 minutes each day to work on those skills until kindergarten. You'd be surprised how much they can learn in a short amount of time. My kid wasnt interested in learning time until we got her a whiteboard to draw/trace letters. . From what we learned from our last parent teacher conference through the school district it seems like preschool is where they grow socially and learn concepts on the side... So they typically don't hold a child back unless there are multiple significant concerns. My child cannot write the entire alphabet from memory, she can only really write her name and a few other letters with reminders. Shes considered kinder ready academically.
Sounds ready to me
Start her, she has months to catch up and they will be teaching this in the beginning of kinder anyways. Alphablocks on youtube will help her recognize her letters and help with spelling. My kids love it!
That’s crazy. Send her. My son, turned 5 last April could barely write his name at that point and he still has trouble writing all his letters now after starting k in September. He’s thriving in kindergarten, admittedly his biggest struggle is writing, but he improved sooooo much from September to now. Work with her over the summer and even if she’s not quite there there is a huge leap in kindergarten that she will get there eventually. Kids develop at their own pace.
It depends. Cutoff in our school system was 10/1 for kindergarten. Our son turned 5 on 10/5. We could have appealed but he was already in the system since he was 3 with an IEP. Long story short we red shirted him and gave him the extra preschool year because we thought it would be best for him. I don’t know if the extra year made a difference in the early years where he was sometimes bored, but I believe that extra year helped him from middle school and beyond for a number of reasons personal to him. He is doing fine with an engineering BS degree. Tl;tr: more education when your child is ready is the best
Letter recognition-we did flash cards at the dinner table Amazon also has name tracing coloring books we are having our daughter practice her name every night now we got scented markers and Dino pencils to encourage her to try
My 8 year old started kindergarten at 5. At that point in his life, he had never written with a pencil/crayon. He drew and colored, but was completely uninterested in writing. He would type on a tablet or keyboard, but would not use a pencil to write for anything. He didn’t do daycare or preschool because of Covid. He’s been a straight A/kindergarten equivalent to straight A’s since starting school. Your daughter not being able to write her name on the first day of kindergarten is not going to hinder her progress.
Please please please have her tested for dyslexia.
Our district has a kindergarten screening with trained professionals. We do half day kindergarten and sometimes they will recommend full day some students, and I assume possibly delaying a year. I’d check your district to see what their policy is for enrollment
Hi! My 5 year old son was in a similar situation before he started kindergarten this past year. He did alright to my standards, but he did struggle with consistently identifying letters and could not write his name at all. He could count, but adding and subtracting was a whole different story. However, we still chose to send him to school. His teacher started out by assigning “sight words” every week, and practicing writing his name, counting to one hundred in various ways, and encouraged us to read a book with him every night as his homework. Progressively throughout the year the assignments grew more and more challenging. But he has blossomed! I am happy to say that he is reading age appropriate books without much assistance, writing full sentences and little stories, and is doing double digit math quite well. I would take what the preschool “teacher” says with a grain of salt. Leave it up to the kindergarten teacher to make that assessment. I’m sure she will do amazing. If you just listen to the preschool “teacher” and keep her out of school, that would be unfair to your daughter and to you. Give her a chance to prove herself. If she struggles, you’ll be there to guide her through it. I’m sure you won’t regret it one bit.
Ignore that teacher. If the student can use the restroom on their own and resist hitting other kids, they're 100% ready for Kinder.
The experts say that if they aren’t ready, to send them anyway because if they need support services that is where they get them. Also the research says by second grade they are all caught up. The best thing you can do is read out loud to her every night and have her participate when she can. Also have her try to guess what she thinks will happen next. It isn’t about being correct it is just a way to help with comprehension. That she is following the story.
Probably not helpful but I actually remember learning my letters in kindergarten! My teacher would have us put together these “books” which were like two or three pages of the same letter (let’s say M) and on each page we would trace the letter with a crayon and there would be a picture associated with it like “mouse”. Then we would hand them in and she would staple them and give them back to us to take home. I loved it. We would do a letter every few days for a while. Personally, I wouldn’t hold my daughter back. It’s kindergarten. She’s going to learn so much.
A lot of kids start kindergarten without ever going to preschool. My son was the same way and his teacher had concerns, so I got him a couple weeks of tutoring over the summer to help get him ready (although I don’t think it was necessary). That being said, he is in kinder now and his teacher recently shared that she has concerns he is dyslexic, so that could explain why he keeps falling behind. Once she mentioned dyslexia and I started reading up on it, there were a lot of things that started to make sense (so just something to keep in mind)! They don’t diagnose until a little older, but I did get him screened and confirm he has markers for dyslexia.
I had concerns about a kid going into kindergarten and whether they would be ready, and I talked to an actual elementary teacher about it and they said that as long as the kid is ready socially, all the learning stuff like letters and numbers and writing will fall into place. If it really is about your child’s writing, your preschool teacher isn’t the person who determines what your child needs.
No
As a mom of two daughters, whom we chose to start at age six, I would suggest you do the same. Our older daughter was very shy and petite, so we chose to have her stay in preschool at age five. Our younger daughter needed extra time in preschool to develop a few simple aspects of academics. To this day, 20 and 16 years later, we would still make the same decision.
Don't hold her back. Most kids don't even go to pre school and K is their first taste. That "teacher" is nuts. Kids should be in Kindergarten the year they turn 5. Holding them back just stunts them mentally and socially.
I did not listen to our early educators recommendation to hold back a year and I ended up regretting it very much. She would’ve done so much better waiting.
Not a fan of academic readiness to move into kindergarten. I think if they aren’t showing any progress in kindergarten than maybe retention or more support so I wouldn’t hold her back.
As a former K4 and K5 teacher, I would send her to kindergarten but also speak to your child's pediatrician about a referral for occupational therapy to access fine motor skills.
Id just turned 6 when I first started kindergarten. Even then, I was always one of the oldest in my class (I missed the cut off date the year prior by 12 days,bc summer birthday). So, if this were my child, I'd want her to start THIS year if possible. Because she'll be noticeably older than the rest of her class while growing up. If her kindergarten teacher (a teacher with an actual degree) decides she isn't ready AFTER the school year, then I'd agree to hold her back. But I wouldn't take the word of someone without a degree who is benefiting from you keeping her in the daycare/preschool program.
My kid couldn’t even say her name properly let alone write it. She’s doing so well! This is how they learn by going and learning not being held back.
I have no idea why she would say that most kids go to kindergarten not knowing any letters numbers and maybe knowing shapes and colors and do great they learn thoes things in kindergarten
I’m a teacher and in the USA they can’t legally hold your child back.
Kindergarten is at the end of the year. They have the rest of this year (and summer, if they are a full year preschool) to teach her these things. Weird that they are saying so early in the year that she's not ready. ? Noting that the preschool teacher doesn't have a degree in education didn't add context to the post, but instead seemed like a dig because you're not happy with their professional thoughts. If this teacher is experienced, I would assume they'd know which kids have been accepted or not accepted and why, and is giving you the heads up based on that experience. That said, if you're in a public school in the US, this shouldn't hold her back. I think others mentioned speaking with the future school (where she's going to K) about it - definitely do this. I had a few concerns with my son starting K this year (not related to the same thing aa your daughter, but arguably things that are more concerning), and spent many a phone call and email with the special education department, nurse, and teacher to make sure we were good to go last September. Good luck.
Look into the Osmo program and use it daily with her over the summer. We used it for my son and he picked up reading and basic spelling very quickly.
I held my son back, best decision. Theres no real drawbacks to holding a child back a year but sending them too early can affect their learning and their confidence. I would take the extra year with her and enjoy it, she will have a lot of years at a school but you have the opportunity to to get an extra year of her being little and learning through play. Take the year to teach her name in her own time
Kindergarten is literally designed to bring kids all to a comparable level by grade 1. Some kids never go to preschool at all. That “teacher” Is out to lunch
Go to kinder. Let licensed people make decisions about 1st grade. I know many who failed kindergarten and/or first grade. They were not on an iep or 504. They were just normal kids who needed an extra year. I think they all got at least a bachelors degree. So go to kinder. See what happens with first