Kindergarten Readiness- Language Skills

Due to COVID-19, most of us have lost access to pre-school and other childcare options that supported our children’s learning. While this is frustrating for students already in school, it is even more nerve wracking for parents of students entering Kindergarten.

Many parents of pre-school aged kids are wondering if their children are on track or falling behind. What are children expected to know when they walk into their first day of Kindergarten? How do we, as parents, make sure they are meeting those expectations?

To help solve this issue, I am starting a series on what kindergartens expect your child to know before they walk in the doors and how you as the parent can support that development.

As always, the first step to solving any problem is to define it. So over the next few weeks, I will be going over the expectations in each of the 4 major developmental domains for this area: social-emotional, language and literacy, math, and English language development (English as a Second Language, ESL). I am taking these standards from the California Preschool Learning Foundations Volume 1. While these are California standards, the rest of the country has similar standards and expectations. In any case, they are a good guideline for us parents.

After I have outlined the standards, I will then post a series of activities you can do with your toddler to help them be ready for school. Those posts will be scaffolded with activities to support earlier learners as well as those about to enter Kindergarten next year.
This week we will be exploring our children’s use of language.

Why Care about Language?

As humans, we communicate through language. Our command of language and ability to read non-verbal cues largely determines our ability to function in society. Babies are primed to learn language, and they begin deciphering our various sounds before they are even born.

Children who enter kindergarten should be primed to learn even more complex areas of language. The more language a child knows at this stage, the more likely they are to be a successful adult.

That doesn’t mean they should know everything, or even have the same abilities in different aspects of language. A child who has a large vocabulary may not be able to pick out sight words, and vice versa. Even so, children should be interested in picking up as much language as they can.

Because nothing happens in a bubble, these skills are scaffolded. We start looking for signs of readiness in the 3.5- 4 year age span, then we look for those skills to have grown in the 4.5-5 year age range. Remember, we start looking for these behaviors at the beginning of the age range, so if your child displays none of them at 3.5 years old or only displays the 4-year-old skills at almost 5 that is okay! They have plenty of time to develop the skills we are looking for.
If your child is a little bit behind, that is okay; that is why the buffer is there. Children have a tendency to develop in leaps in one domain and stagnate in the others. They often rotate through where these great gains are made.

If you are concerned that your child is falling too far behind, consult your doctor. Early intervention is key if there is a problem. The sooner you start intervention, the faster the problem corrects itself and the less likely it is to turn into a disadvantage later.

One more disclaimer: children all express themselves differently. The examples below are only a few ways children can demonstrate readiness in this domain. Furthermore, readiness is evaluated in the child’s mother tong. So a child who speaks a different language at home should display readiness in that language, but may not display readiness in an English environment.

At 4 Years Old

Listening and Speaking

Speaking clearly is hard, but your 4-year-old should be able to speak in a way that you and other people in their life understand. They may use some strange words for common items (like “color” for crayon, or “wubby” for their blanket) but they do so consistently and everyone who is a constant in their life understands what they want. Code-switching is now a thing, and they can speak in a different manner to adults than peers. They may even tailor their language to if they are at school or at home.

Your 4-year-old should also have a full understanding of categories of items and descriptors. For example, they could identify a chicken and a duck and tell you they are both birds, or you could ask them to bring you a vehicle and they may bring a toy train, car, and boat. They will also be able to categorize items into larger categories like toys, clothes, or food.

When asking for multiple toys, they can identify the category “Can I play with the cars too?” and they can describe a single item from a category in a depth matching their interest and exposure to the subject matter. For example, one child may hold up a toy train and say “this train is small and blue,” while another child could hold up that same train and say “This is Thomas! He is blue and smiles a lot! I like him better than Percy. Percy is green!”

They should learn words quickly and be able to identify and categorize where that new word goes. If the teacher is talking about bugs and points out a dragonfly (new word) the child should be able to point out more dragonflies and understand the dragonfly is a bug. They may spend a few days identifying dragonflies when they see them or demand to read books where they can see a dragonfly, and you may get a thousand questions about them too.

Your 4-year-old should be getting good at using language throughout daily life. Gone are the days they spent summoning you through screams, and they can now articulate what they want/ need. They will now ask for more crayons, claim ownership over toys “this is my bear,” they can say hello and goodbye at appropriate times, and they can describe events and items.

Childeren this age are beginning to understand more complex directions as well. They can put their puzzles away when asked, or identify all the circles in the room. 3 and 4-word requests, like “please sit down,” or “take this to the table,” are easily understood and can be followed without further direction. They also understand attributes like big and little. So if you ask for the “big” bowl, they should be able to give it to you.

Stories are getting more complex and now use descriptive words. Look for phrases like “then the green truck came and took the trash.” Or stories with sequences like “the mama dog had babies. The baby dogs are playing with the ball,” and “I put peanut butter on my bread. I want jelly too.”

When it comes to grammar or verb conjugation, they understand the basic rules but may not always get it right for our non-standard verbs. For example, a 4-year-old could say that Alex “is jumping” rope, and later point out that he “jumped” rope, but may still struggle with verbs like give/ gave.

They should also understand adding “s” makes things plural. If you ask for the cups, they understand you are looking for more than one cup. But they may still have trouble with non-standard plurals. For example, your child may still have “foots” instead of “feet” and there may be “persons” in a group instead of “people”.

Pronouns are also really tricky at this age. Expect them to use pronouns, but to do so inconsistently and incorrectly. Sometimes daddy may get the “he” pronoun, and other times your child may assign daddy a “her” pronoun. They may also use the incorrect conjugation of a pronoun “Him put it there.” Don’t worry too much about the incorrect pronouns, they will get fixed over time.

Reading

Children of all ages love to read, and while your 4-year-old won’t be reading yet, they are very into the stories you read them. They should show you they love the act of reading with you. Maybe they bring you books to read or refuse to go to bed without a story (and then ask for one more). When reading them the book, they clearly pay attention to most of the story. When asked about the story, they are happy to discuss it with either an adult or a peer. They may also look to tell and “write” stories of their own.

At this age, they are beginning to understand more complex plots. A 4-year-old should be able to identify the main character and understand what that character wants and where they are. They may act out scenes from their favorite book or pretend to be their favorite character. If they are acting out scenes from a book, they should be able to do them in order.

When reading stories, the child should also be able to add additional information to common topics. For example, when reading about the zoo, the child may claim an animal as their favorite “I like the giraffe. They have long necks,” when not on that animal’s page. Or they could list all the things they would take to Grandma’s when reading a story about Grandmas.

If they pick up a book, the child should be able to orient it so it is right-side up, and then pretend to read. They can identify the title of the book and they like to turn the pages in the proper direction as if they were reading. At this point, they may not turn the pages one at a time, especially for books with normal paper pages.

They can also identify what is text and what isn’t. They may point to a stop sign and claim it says their name or pretend to read you the text of a book while telling a story. When looking at a book, they can point to the pictures when asked, and identify what is text when asked. During play, they may “write” you a story and then ask you to “read” it.

In terms of recognizing the written word, the child may only be able to recognize a few letters. The first letter of their name and common letters like T or A are very common. When playing a game, they should know what letter/ sound common objects, especially their name, begin with. And when tracing letters, they may be able to identify some of the letters by name. At this age, they may not recognize letter cases and may only be able to recognize the upper case or lower case version of letters.

Writing

4-year-olds can’t necessarily write, but they understand what writing is and that it communicates things. This is most apparent when they are drawing.

They recognize how we write and are trying very hard to mimic our grip, with mixed success. Sometimes they may hold the crayon with two or three fingers, other times they may grab the writing implement with their whole fist. Unlike when they were first starting to draw, they can manipulate both fat and thin writing implements and are just as proficient with the pen they just nicked from your desk as they are their fat crayons.

By 4, children should be exposed to all manner of art. They should understand how to create marks with paint, pens, pencils, crayons, markers, brushes, fingers, and chalk without instruction.

When they are drawing, they may produce “writing” that looks like fake cursive and they should pretend it is writing. They could “read” you a story they “wrote” or claim to be working while you are writing something. To mimic print, they may string a series of lines, circles, and other shapes together. These strings of shapes may be close together or farther apart.

At this point, they should also understand signatures. They may create a distinct scribble and refer to it as their name, or they could just “sign” their name in the same spot on the paper every time. Regardless of how they “sign” their work, when they excitedly bring you their art, they should include it as one of the things they tell you about the picture without prompting. For example: “Look, that’s Daddy, and mommy, and the house, and this is my name!”

If given the opportunity, they may be excited to trace letters and numbers, but it is unlikely they will be able to accurately reproduce letters or numbers when not tracing them.

At 5 Years Old

Listening and Speaking

Most people should now be able to understand your 5-year-old, not just those close to them. They have been working hard on their language and most of the speech errors you heard at 4 should be gone. Tenses and plurals are mostly good, and they understand what acceptable speech is in different situations and they mostly stick to it. That means they are doing most of their screaming outside, and they use Mr. / Ms. when referring to their teachers. They may use more formal/ concise words at school than at home and adapt easily to different environments.

Their vocabulary has expanded too and they now use specific words for objects. It isn’t just a dog anymore, it is a golden retriever; you aren’t looking at a dinosaur, you are looking at a tyrannosaurus; that isn’t a blue fork, it is a plastic blue fork. They also understand broad categories. For example, they could list off the couch, chair, and coffee table when asked what furniture is in the living room. When reading a book about animals, they may be able to identify all the reptiles or mammals on the page as well.

They aren’t perfect, but they do understand the proper conjugations for many non-standard verbs and nouns. For example, they may have switched from “mouses” to “mice” or from “sheeps” to “sheep” and from “eated” to “ate”. But they will likely still struggle with new words and uncommon words. Their pronouns have gotten better too and they now understand possessive pronouns. You may hear phrases like “Our tower is the biggest,” or “Those are mom’s shoes.”

Comparisons and determining where objects are in space is also much easier. They can talk about how the elephants are bigger than the zebras, and identify a mouse as even smaller than a zebra. Taller/ shorter comparisons are constantly made between kids, and they can identify the block in front of the tower compared to the block next to the tower. If you ask a child of this age to get their bowl from the small table, they should be able to get the bowl from the small table even if there is an identical bowl on a larger table.

It should also be clear the child understands cause and effect. “We can go outside, it is sunny now,” or commenting “He’s gonna get wet” when a friend is about to pour water the wrong way. And questions should be very common and specific. “Where are we going?” “Is daddy going to work?” “Why aren’t we going to the park today?” “ Can I go down the slide one more time before we go home?”

As much as your 4-year-old loved stories, your 5-year-old should love telling them. They should be able to concoct complex stories that unfold over time. Timing words like first, then, next, second, last, oh-and then, etc. Should punctuate such stories. For example: “We wrote to the zoo, and they kept sending us animals. But we didn’t like the animals. So the class got a ginny pig. We like the ginny pig, he is fun.”

When playing together, there should be a seamless back and forth between children that communicates and responds to complex ideas. Complex conversations like the one below should be common:

Child A: “I’m gonna be the baby. I’m hungry.”
Child B (mom voice): “Hi baby! I’m the mommy! What do you want for breakfast?”
Child A: “Pancakes”
Child B: “I’m going to make pancakes”

Finally, they can also understand multi-step or complex instructions of up to 4 concepts. You can now expect a child to understand and remember a longer instruction like “put your coat, shoes, and gloves in your cubby,” or “please set the table, wash your hands, and sit down for dinner.”

Reading

Where before your child understood the difference between text and pictures, now they should understand that each set of text says something specific and special. They no longer identify everything written as their name and will ask you what something specifically says. Once read, the child might memorize what was said in that specific selection of text and then “read” it to some friends or dolls.

They should also recognize their own name in print along with other common sight words and their letters. Common words to recognize at this age include: mom, dad, friends’ names, common signs like STOP, and words associated with food or their pets. All letters should be recognizable in any case, though they may be confused by particularly fancy scripts.

And letters are not just abstract objects anymore. They have sounds! The child can figure out the sound for a letter and could point out the letter associated with a sound and may even pick out which letter starts a new word from the sound it makes. They can sound out short 3 letter words and match them to their letters. Words like hat, mop, up, and sit are common because each letter is distinctly heard when saying the word.

As they are noticing letters have unique sounds, they are also beginning to understand rhyming. They should be able to pick out rhyming words and words that start with the same letter when they also have a picture present. And they should be able to change the first letter of a short word to make a new word (turning sun into fun).

They are also beginning to understand compound and multi-syllable words. Try asking things like, “if I have a book and I need to put it on a shelf, where does it go?” and you should get “bookshelf” as an answer, you could even clap out the syllables of “book-shelf” with them.

5-year-olds should love reading and books. They should be excited to go to the library or get a new book, and they should love listening to stories. At this age, they should have the attention span for a whole book and they should be able to ask questions relevant to the story and understand details of the plot. After reading a book about reptiles and amphibians, they should be able to tell you the differences between the two. After storytime, when pretending to be Repunzel, they may take scarves to make their hair longer.

Writing

At this point, the child should be holding the writing implement like an adult, and they should hold the paper in place while they do so.

Pictures, figures, and letters should be recognizable but sloppy and they should be able to draw common shapes too.

They may label and sign their drawings, but the labels may not be legible. And they should be able to write the letters of their name without help. When signing their name, they may not put the letters together in a word, or have them in order, but they should be able to write all of the letters to make their name.

Conclusion

Children have a lot of language to learn before entering kindergarten, and there is a lot we can do to help them learn it. So much, in fact, that it merits its own post. Usually, I would include some activities to help here, but the post is too long already. So next week I will have a full post on how to support language development in our children. Stay tuned!

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