15 Ways Our Kids are Showing Up to Kindergarten “Behind”
Playful Bee
Education Team at Playful Bee
Playful Bee is an e-Preschool that delivers inquiry-based preschool learning from the classroom to your home. Our preschool curriculum was created by our talented team of rock star teachers. With years of hands-on preschool and Kindergarten teaching experience, they've developed a high-quality preschool experience that is convenient-to-use and easy-to-teach by you, grandparents, or your nanny at home.
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Wonderful article with solid ideas to get children ready for kindergarten. However, as a reading specialist I very much take exception to the first item in the post- teaching letters. For most kids this should not interfear with learning to read, but for the other 20% (about 4 kids per classroom) this is a huge mistake. Phonemic awareness (knowing & manipulating the sounds in our language) comes prior to learning letters. For those struggling to read, teaching letters can interfere with their progress. How many times has a child come to a word they didn’t know & the teacher or parent says “What’s this sound?” & the child replies by giving the name of the letter? No matter how many times the adult asks, the child providing the letter name will not allow her to pronounce or recognize the word.
Gail, what a great comment! Thank you for sharing your specific perspective on the importance of learning to recognize letters. I think most folks focus on recognizing the alphabets because it’s so visual and can be easily incorporated into many early childhood toys and play materials. With such strong indicators pointing to learn how to recognize the Alphabet, it’s not a surprise that phonics is often overlooked until later in early childhood. However, we do talk about the importance of children learning to recognize and manipulate sounds in #12 Do Not Recognize Sounds. We will definitely look into updating our post with your insights to share with the rest of our community. Thank you!