For the longest time, kindergarten felt like a distant milestone, one that seemed lightyears away. When the day finally arrived, I was flooded with a mix of emotions—joy, sadness, and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. As I snapped pictures at the bus stop, I felt relieved to be free from daycare expenses but also unprepared for the new journey of parenting an elementary school student.
Hindsight is 20/20, and I realized how much easier it could have been with the right guidance. So, here it is: the comprehensive kindergarten survival guide I wish I had to navigate the kindergarten year effortlessly.
Don’t pave the road
Kindergarten is a lot of new experiences for your kid and with that a lot of exhaustive emotions and behaviors from your kid for you to handle, which I first viewed as a burden. I thought we were leaving the toddler tantrum phase and it felt like such a regression.
For me, a game changer that year was a perspective change. One of the best quotes I ever learned about parenting is “prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.”
If you prepare the path to remove your kid’s negative behaviors and emotions, your child is missing out on those necessary life skill building experiences. Here are two examples from kindergarten where I instead prepared the child for the path:
Example 1:
During the beginning of the year, a classmate kept stealing my child’s lunchbox and hiding it around the class room. This kid definitely thought it was a hilarious game and probably didn’t realize how my child perceived it. My first thought was “don’t worry, I will send a message to the teacher and get this taken care of!” And then I remembered, it was an opportunity to work on skills.
I first asked follow-up questions on how did it make my kid feel (sad, anger), was she always able to find her lunch in time to eat it (yes), and then what could be some ways she could solve the problem and could we brainstorm together. She decided she would tell her classmate that she didn’t like the game and it hurt her feelings. A few days later, the lunchbox issue quit happening.
Example 2:
Another issue we had was a classmate who sat next to my kid kept poking her. This made me mad and I wanted to send a message to the teacher asking her to be moved. However, I realized that would not allow my kid the chance to grow. I talked to her and asked her to tell the kid to stop but it continued. I lamented to a mom friend that I was going to have to intervene since my kid already tried and it didn’t work.
My mom friend was like what a great opportunity for her to work on her “no”. She told me to practice with her. To role play it at home to see if she was whispering “no” in her quiet mouse voice or using her strong words. She said “don’t you want her to know how to say no and mean it when she is a teenager and an adult.” That strong voice takes practice, and it starts now. Long story short, she was saying no with a grin on her face in her quiet nice voice and after role playing at home, she tried again and was able to get her message across and the poking stopped.
Building Resilience Through Experience
The small challenges our kids face in every day life at school are the practice they need to develop problem solving skills, learning to work with peers, making friends, gaining control over their emotions and building the self confidence in themselves that they are prepared and can handle bigger challenges life throws at them.
(Of course, there are problems you should always intervene in but take a moment and decide which type of problem is it. It surprised me when I trusted in my child and watched her rise to the occasion.)
Decompress from school routine
Your kid holds it together all day, so expect them to be at their worse when they get home. While you might have had this a bit from preschool. Kindergarten doesn’t have nap or as many breaks, or as many snacks, or as much free play as preschool. Therefore, we experienced this much worse in kindergarten than previous years.
Whether it’s right after they get off the bus or you pick them up for after school, I have found asking “how was your day” is NEVER the right answer. It is too abstract, and it usually results in a meltdown.
Instead, all their emotions will come out and not in a good way.
So first you need a 30 minute routine for when you finally see them that helps them feel secure and decompress. We always have a favorite snack first. I bring one in the car with me so they can just snack on the ride home.
Once home, we have a routine of sitting on a comfy couch with a fuzzy blanket. I always have a stack of books and we read a few board books. I don’t ask any questions. My kid knows this is their time with me to get snuggles and to decompress from the day.
Build a routine that suits your kid. Maybe you can tell they are bursting with energy so your routine includes a pillow fight or a chase around the house or a playground.
They don’t eat at school
As I mentioned in the point above, a lot less snack breaks in kindergarten.
Also lunch time is short!
There are many days when my kid was only able to eat a few bites. I also have a kid who loves to chat so that is what she spends lunch doing. My tip is to pack easy to eat lunches. I love gogurts since they can down them in seconds.
Prioritize sleep and get snoring checked out
I would be preaching to the choir if I told a bunch of parents how important a good night sleep is. No one understands chronic sleep deprivation like a parent of small kids.
However, what I didn’t know and what came up in kindergarten was that snoring is a sign of sleep apnea in kids. Almost all sleep apnea is caused by obstruction (usually adenoids or tonsils) in kids. Therefore, if they are snoring or waking up a lot still as a kindergartener, please make an appointment with a pediatric ENT.
My kid snored and mouth breathed. These were the symptoms I could see. I had no idea until we did a sleep study that she was waking up 15 times an hour because she was having so much trouble breathing.
We got her adenoids and tonsils removed and behavior improved immensely. Her focus at school changed dramatically. We had a different kid.
While this obviously doesn’t apply to every kid, I just want to include it because I didn’t know we needed to get kid snoring checked out.
Name it to tame it
I think something I did was expect my kid to be more mature because she was in elementary school, but really emotions and feelings are still important to work on.
Let’s be honest, we adults still have trouble managing our emotions. I can have a hard time staying calm when my kids get angry or do something mean.
My go to here is name it to tame it and with it I always separate the action from the child such as:
- “Being angry is okay, hitting is not okay. I would be angry too if someone took my toy that I was playing with. I would be so angry.”
Once your kid is calmer and listening:
- “Let’s see if you and I can think of some good solutions on how to handle this. Here are some options. Which one do you want to try?”
Books about feelings are also great, a calm corner with their favorite things is also good to have for a kindergartener. I also love love love the Inside Out movies.
Lastly get in the habit of modeling it such as:
- “I’m disappointed because the thunderstorm ruined our pool day. “
Kids don’t follow the saying “do as I say, not as I do.” We are built with mirror neurons, and they learn by watching behavior. I am all too well reminded of this fact when I asked my kid to pick up her toys and her answer was “not now, I have a meeting with my dolls.”
My last piece of advice here is the game I heard your feelings. My kids love talking about the scenes on each card and learning about emotions when it’s a third party.
The academics start
We supplement academics at home, especially math, since most skills are all about exposure quantity and exercising those brain muscles.
Something I have started to realize is there are so many opportunities to add reading into your kid’s everyday life. Once they start, they can read signs on a drive, they listen to bedtime books and will soon read before bed. They will also start to write and want to spell words on arts and crafts.
However, it is much harder to add math to the everyday unless you are intentional about it. The easiest way we have done this is to use the Evan Moor math workbooks. They have a few problems for every day. We started halfway through kindergarten and have continued to use them for other grades.
If workbooks aren’t your thing, there are so many great games that teach math and build the brain: Blink, Clumsy Thief, Rolly Polly and Tiny Polka Dot. I can not recommend games as a way to build skill enough!
Sleeping Queens is also another awesome math game but more suited for first graders.
We also play math games in the car. I will ask math questions as we drive and I make them silly such as:
- There were five ducks and two found a secret potion. They drank the potion and turned into bananas. How many ducks were left?
In the summer, we do summer reading programs through libraries and then the summer math review workbooks.
What to ask at parent teacher conference
There might be a few kiddos your child knows in the new kindergarten class but chances are, there are going to be a lot of new kids. At the parent teacher conference ask if there is anyone your child gravitates to, who your kid plays with at recess, etc. Another thing I learned at the parenting course from the child psychologist is that one on one playdates are a great tool to build friendships. It can be hard to get play going in a group setting where there are a lot of ideas. Set up a craft or something that is a guaranteed success for the first activity and then let the kids take it from there.
The next item to ask for is testing. Most schools test reading (letter recognition, sounds, etc.) in kindergarten) and math. Legally most states require schools to share it. If you don’t receive the results, then email and ask again. I found this information so important over the year to ensure my kid was improving.
Kids only get flagged if they are a grade behind. I wanted to be able to help my kid before we got to that point. It also helped me to see what my kid was good at and what we could work on at home.
For instance, my second kid was really good at addition in kindergarten but knowing what number comes next or before was a big struggle. I only knew this because of the school report. While we work on math at home, I wouldn’t have focused on this without the report.
Label everything
You need to label everything with your kids name. I mean everything! Clothing, jackets, gloves, lunch boxes, tupperware, socks, shoes. I bought this label maker. Honestly it was a great purchase, I use it so much for other organizing projects around the house.
Buy two if you can
Summer is a great time to buy those snow pants, snow boots and gloves and hats since they are on sale and get two sets if you can.
I cannot recommend enough buying two lunch boxes so you can wash one in the dishwasher instead of every night by hand. We used the bento boxes for a long time but I felt like I needed more flexibility. We now have a lot of Tupperware.
Get a key chain system
For our kids, they were bus some days and parent pick up or after school program on others. After a few mishaps where my kid didn’t get on the bus and I had a panic attack, I decided to add in my own system.
Since the school and teachers have so many kids all with different schedules and my kindergartener can’t remember, I bought keychains that I would switch out on her backpack. This way at the end of the day, she could look at her keychain and get into the right line. We have used this system with all our kids and have yet to have another mistake.
Tell your kid “You are ready!”
I took a three day parenting course by a child psychologist through our pediatrician office. My biggest takeaway is the power of your words. Kids can build great self esteem and confidence from hearing over and over again that they can do it, they are prepared, and they have everything they need inside of them already. Take every opportunity to build them up with your words.
Even if they say no, keep saying it. Eventually it will change their internal monologue. My kid would ask questions about kindergarten and I would answer it and then say: You are ready. You got this.
Other ways to build their confidence is to give them any decision where they can start building that internal trust system in themselves: Lunch choice, outfits, etc.
Timer is a great tool
If you haven’t already discovered the magical timer with your toddler. You need to with your kindergartener. It helped us so much to get out of the house in the morning for school.
While being late was not optimal for preschool, it now counts as a tardy and schools keep track.
For some reason when the timer says it is time to go it is a neutral party. It isn’t me vs child anymore. Also, kids love to set timers. They also love Siri telling them it is time to go. They will then come and tell me it’s time to go instead of the other way around.
There is a lot of sitting in kindergarten
One of the biggest differences between preschool and kindergarten is the amount of movement. So try to get movement in the afternoons.
Just want to add this to remind you because there will be many days where you can’t understand why your kid can’t sit at the dinner table or is just a mess.
Friday Meltdown
Try to avoid busy Fridays. I find that the week wears on my kids and by Friday, my kids need a calm day. They can’t keep it together so in kindergarten we started movie Fridays, where our evening would be a family movie on the couch creating some awesome memories.
Embrace the Journey
Kindergarten is a pivotal time in your child’s life, filled with new experiences, challenges, and opportunities for growth. As parents, it’s our role to guide them through this transition, providing the support they need while allowing them to develop independence and resilience. Remember, every small victory and each little hurdle is a step toward building a well-rounded, confident individual.
By preparing your child for the path ahead rather than clearing every obstacle from their way, you empower them to face life’s challenges head-on. Create routines that help them decompress, stay attuned to their emotional needs, and foster their academic skills through fun and engaging activities. Your encouragement and belief in their capabilities will instill a lasting sense of confidence and self-reliance.
As you navigate this exciting year, take pride in watching your child grow, learn, and thrive in their new environment. Celebrate the milestones, learn from the setbacks, and cherish every moment of this remarkable journey. Your support and guidance will help them shine brightly in kindergarten and beyond.
Did I miss something that you’ve experienced with your Kindergartener? Let me know in the comments.
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I am a wife, teacher, and mother to two awesome girls. I write about what I am passionate about, which includes being a mom, house projects, beauty and skincare. I love to share my experiences, failures, and successes with my readers. Let this space be a resource for you to pursue your very best day.