Kindergarten and Young Fives

Families interested in Young Fives Kindergarten should enroll students using the same process as traditional Kindergarten via online Skyward enrollment. Parents/Guardians are encouraged to attend a Parent Informational Night in March (virtual) and schedule a Kindergarten Round Up* appointment if offered. Class rosters will be created based on numerous factors to best meet the needs of students. Should the number of qualifying students exceed the number of Young Fives slots allocated, a lottery will be used to establish placement. Young Fives classroom rosters will be established on or before June 30.

*If a traditional Kindergarten Round-Up event cannot take place, the child’s birthdate and non-observational data collected through parent/guardian and previous teacher input will be used to determine placement.

Highlight Your Child Form - Important to Return this to HEC 

Common Core Standards 

Welcome to Mason Public Schools! 

When determining if your child is ready for school, consider his or her readiness to learn rather than the mastery of specific skills. How well is your child able to communicate and listen? Is your child able to get along with other children and adults? Use your own intuition as a parent and consult your child's doctor, preschool teacher and any other child care providers for useful, objective information about your child's development and readiness for school.

Here are 10 school readiness skills to practice with your child as you support his/her transition to the formal school setting. Your child should not have these skills mastered as we will continue to work on all of these skills with your child throughout the school year. We encourage you to try these activities to support your child’s transition to school in the fall.

Writing

• Help your child practice writing letters, especially the letters in his/her name.
• Teach your child how to write his/her name with an uppercase first letter and the remaining letters in lowercase.
• Write in shaving cream in the bathtub, salt or sugar in a cake pan or in finger paint to make practicing more fun and multisensory.

Letter Recognition

• Play games to help your child recognize some letters of the alphabet.
• Play hide and seek with refrigerator magnets.
• Rather than quizzing your child with flashcards, use them to play a game of alphabet Go Fish.

Beginning Sounds

• Support your child’s awareness of the sound that each letter makes.
• Find items around the house that begin with the same sound and identify the letter that makes each sound.
• Overemphasize the first sound in words to help your child hear the individual sounds in words.

Number Recognition and Counting

• Count throughout the day (for example, the crackers your child is eating for snack or the socks that you take out of the dryer).
• Point out numbers you see in your environment and have your child name them (for example, the numbers found on mail boxes or street signs).
• Count, write and recognize numbers to 10.

Shapes and Colors

• If your child is having trouble recognizing certain colors, you might add a little food coloring to cookie dough, milk or vanilla pudding to emphasize those colors.
• Help your child recognize more difficult shapes such as a rhombus, hexagon and rectangles by showing him/her how to draw them on paper and cut them out.
• Play games in which your child finds objects of particular colors and shapes around the house or in the neighborhood as you drive.

Fine Motor Skills

• Give your child several different writing options (colored pencils, crayons or markers) to help keep him/her interested in writing and drawing.
• Playing with play dough is a fun way to strengthen the muscles of the hand that will be used for writing.

Cutting

• Purchase a good pair of child-safe scissors and let your child practice.
• Give him/her old magazines or newspapers to cut up, or allow him/her to make a collage of the things she likes by cutting them from magazines and gluing them to a piece of paper.
• Cutting play dough is also fun for children.

Reading Readiness

• Run your finger under the words as you read to your child to help him/her learn that words go from left to right and top to bottom.
• Play games with rhyming words to help your child hear similar sounds in words. For example, as you are going up the stairs, name one word that rhymes with cat for each step.

Attention and Following Directions

• Read lots of stories with your child and work up to reading longer chapter books, one chapter each night or as long as he/she remains interested and focused.
• Give your child two and three step directions. For example: "Put on your pajamas, brush your teeth and pick a book to read."
• Play Simon Says with two or three step directions. For example: "Simon Says, jump up and down and shout hooray."

Social Skills

• Give your child opportunities to interact with other children in preschool, social groups or play dates.
• Teach your child how to express his/her feelings if he/she doesn’t like something.
• Role-play different situations one might experience on the playground or at school.
• Help him/her find solutions for typical problems she might encounter.

Chances are, you're already practicing many of these skills your child will need for school. Remember to keep it fun and don’t make it stressful for you or your child. This fun practice will help support your child to be even more prepared for his/her elementary school debut!

We are looking forward to working with your child,
 The Harvey Education Center Kindergarten Team