When I taught, I would get my students ready for kindergarten by providing social/ emotional activities, as well as academics.
But another thing I use to do is have the students fill their backpacks at the end of the day, and then check them the following day, to make sure the parents were cleaning them out. I wanted the students to be responsible for their own cubbies, and I wanted the parents to get in the habit of checking their backpacks and keeping them cleaned out.
When I worked in the school-age room. I noticed that some students had months of homework in their backpacks. They weren’t telling their parents and their parents weren’t checking.
I also you use work with the students on memory exercises. For our clothing theme, I told all the students to bring in one sock. I made it fun, by saying “don’t bring me no dirty stinky sock either, bring in a fresh clean one.” Of course, they laughed, and I knew this would help them remember. Six out of ten students brought in the one sock.
I believe that we have to get parents ready for the transition into kindergarten as well as the students. I think it is important to provide parents support, without doing everything for them. Otherwise, they might expect that from the elementary school teachers.
Darla the Teacher
