Jen's Notebook

Every stage in a child’s life helps them to take steps toward eventually begin an independent adult, but kindergarten seems to be one of the bigger steps. For a lot of children it is their very first time in a school setting. For most it is their first time in a big school with lots of other children. Since kindergarten is a great time to gain more and more independence and responsibility, here are a few things that we would like students to be able to do on their own as the school year proceeds:

• Take care of the library book. I try to get my students to keep their library book in their backpack when they are not reading it to keep it from getting lost. When the book does not come back on library day I often hear, “My mom forgot to put it in my backpack!” WHAT??? You will hear me telling my students that their library book is their responsibility and not their mom’s. OK, but I am realistic, I have 5 children, I remember looking for a lot of library books also. But that said, try to get them to keep their library book in a special place (high up from younger siblings) or in their backpack so they know where it is and are responsible for bringing it back to school.
• Homework is another way to help them be responsible. Of course, they will need your guidance in doing the homework, but taking it back and forth from school and remembering to turn it in will help build their responsibility.
• Asking them to be responsible for notes and items going back and forth to school such as coats, hats and gloves. If something is lost, try to get them to come in and ask me if I have seen it. The more they become responsible throughout the year for their own items the better.
• Make them responsible for telling you how their day went and what they did each day at school.

As you can see, none of this is earth shattering. These are all things you already work on with your kids. Step by step we will help them grow into first graders and their independence will grow with that.

Tags: ABC's Of Kindergarten

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2015 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Blog, Kindergarten ABC's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.