Little Kids Place strive to prepare our scholars with the building blocks necessary to develop preschool readiness.

1) A desire to explore: Before a child can learn, they must feel confident enough to discover and explore his environment. This is an innate skill that we are born with, and these moments are vital. Little Kids Place scholars learn best through play and need opportunities to explore, create, build, and to figure out how things work.

• They thrive with windows of time to pretend at the dollhouse, to build with legos, to play outside with sticks and rocks, and to take things apart, again and again. The more children play, the more creativity they develop, and the more they understand how the world works around them.

Children who have lots of experience playing before preschool easily adapt to the environment and become absorbent learners quickly.

2) The ability to follow one and two-step directions: A big part of the preschool day involves listening to the teacher. Teachers often give directions such as, “throw your tissue away,” “put the truck back on the shelf,” or “get your coat and go to the door.”

It is important for Little Kids Place scholars to be able to listen to these instructions and to be able to carry them out. While it might be tempting to do some of these activities for children, we believe they are better off if we use them as learning opportunities.

It is a huge skill for children to follow directions, and sometimes it takes weeks for children to get the hang of it in the classroom setting. Little Kids Place scholars are successful at following directions when they enter preschool and have a huge advantage over those who do not as they are able to dive into learning activities instead of spending so much time practicing their listening skills.

3) Practice at completing tasks: As Little Kids Place scholars are playing, their needs to develop the skills to complete a project — or at least the opportunity to.

Little Kids Place scholars have practiced completing tasks and have much longer attention spans and have greater abilities to stay focused amidst all the distractions that a group setting brings.

4) The confidence to speak up: There are many times in a preschooler’s day that a child needs to feel confident and secure enough to tell the teacher something.

Little Kids Place encourages them to come to us and tell us when they need to use the bathroom, when they need help, when they are finished with an activity, or when they accidentally make a spill.

Even a quiet and shy child can quickly build trust with the teacher and become an excellent communicator.

And if this is a struggle for your child, just let us know so we can help create more moments for them to feel comfortable with this.

5) A beginning understanding of empathy: While this is listed last, it is definitely one of the most important traits that all children (and adults) should have, which is why Little Kids Place understands

Empathy is a huge factor in how our scholars build relationships. Children who are empathetic are able to get along better with their peers and treat the children and adults in their environment with respect.

When it comes to getting your child ready for preschool, these are

key things that Little Kids Place focuses upon, which will make a huge difference for starting preschool.

1. Self regulation: The ability to obtain, maintain and change emotion, behavior, attention and activity level appropriate for a task or situation.

2. Sensory processing: Accurate processing of sensory stimulation in the environment as well as in one’s own body which effects attention, behavior and learning.

3. Receptive language (understanding): Comprehension of spoken language (vocabulary, instructions, questions, concepts) for group instructions as well as peer interaction.

4. Expressive language (using language): Formulating sentences that have age appropriate grammar (e.g. using pronouns ‘he/she’ correctly) and word order, using specific vocabulary, and telling a simple story.

5. Articulation: The ability to clearly pronounce individual sounds in words and sentences.

6. Executive Functioning: Higher order reasoning and thinking skills (e.g. working out how to make the desired building, collecting the materials and overcoming challenges in the process).

7. Emotional development/regulation: The ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and regulate emotions. It also means responding age appropriately to a frustration and managing to ‘contain’ tantrums or recovering quickly from an upset.

8. Social skills: Determined by the ability to engage in reciprocal interaction with others (either verbally or non-verbally), to compromise with others and to be able to recognize and follow social norms.

9. Planning and sequencing: The sequential multi-step task/activity performance to achieve a well-defined result.