How to Assess and Prepare your Kid’s Kindergarten Readiness

If your son or daughter is approaching 5-years old, you might be asking, “Is my child ready for kindergarten?” Here’s a guide on how to evaluate and prepare in early childhood for kindergarten readiness.

From birth to five years old, there’s a lot of many skills our kids learn and develops. Additionally, young children start to learn many of these skills in preschool. But if your son or daughter will meet their kindergarten teacher and start school soon, we all can’t help to evaluate their kindergarten readiness.

KINDERGARTEN READINESS CHECKLIST

Here’s a simple kindergarten readiness assessment to know if your kid is ready. If your child can do these things in these categories, they will have a smooth transition to kindergarten:

Fine Motor Skills

  • Use and hold writing, art, and craft utensils properly
  • Trace over or copy shapes, letters, and numbers fairly accurately
  • Writes some letters, typically their name (upper and lower case)

Early Learning and Academic Skills

  • Identify, copies, or repeats patterned sequences
  • Recognizes and can group similar objects (by shape, size, and color)
  • Solves basic puzzles
  • Identifies different colors
  • Listens to and repeats stories, songs, or poems
  • Understands how to read a book in a natural flow

Mathematic Skills

  • Can count from one to ten in a sequence
  • Can add or subtract up to five
  • Recognizes basic shapes
  • Arrange items in the correct order or groups

Language and Communication Skills

  • Knows and says first and last name
  • Communicates needs and wants
  • Can speak and be understood (in mostly complete sentences)
  • Knows and can speak most or all of the alphabet in order

Physical Skills

  • Can run and jump (even on one foot)
  • Able to use bathroom and clean up on own
  • Hand-eye coordination to play games (like a ball)
  • Can climb stairs and on playgrounds

Emotional Skills

  • Ready to handle a full day of school without parent or guardian
  • Can listen and understand directions (for at least 5 minutes)
  • Interacts with other children

This might look like a lot! Don’t worry, children don’t need to be perfectly ready. But if you feel like some areas of school readiness aren’t quite there, you can help with childhood education. Some worksheets and activities I shared below will help you prep. 

Please also consult with your school district on any additional requirements. Also future students with disabilities will want to do additional research. But this checklist will cover general needs. 

Getting Ready for Kindergarten with Worksheets

Just before my daughter entered Kindergarten, we wanted to help her brush up a bit on her letters and other basic skills. 

I created a new Alphabet Handwriting Drill, and made about a hundred copies to keep on hand this summer. I was realizing we have quite a few worksheets that review Basic Kindergarten Skills so I combined them all into one handy kit that you can download at the end of this post. All five of these free printable worksheets are perfect for getting your little one ready for Kindergarten.

Basic Kindergarten Skills Worksheets

Recognizing Uppercase and Lowercase Letters
Without really thinking about it, we often spend much more time practicing uppercase than lowercase letters. This worksheet will help your little one practice pairing upper case with their lower case letters. As you’re doing this worksheet, it’s a great opportunity to also review the basic letter sounds. Check out our Letter Matching worksheet to get started.

Cutting Basics
Oh, it’s hard to write this with a straight face because we Moms know the trouble scissors can create. Nonetheless, learning to use scissors properly is an essential Kindergarten skill. Our simple Shooting Star exercise provides an entertaining review of (or perhaps introduction to) scissors.

Reviewing Directions
Even with preschool, Kindergarten is perhaps the first time our little ones will be expected to follow directions. Our Directional Worksheet not only helps master left and right concepts, it is also the perfect excuse to review basic shapes — knocking out two basic kindergarten skills in one worksheet!

Mastering Numbers 1 through 20
Our Sunshine Counting worksheet provides a great excuse to practice counting to 20. If that’s too easy–challenge your kindergartner to do it backwards!

Handwriting
Our Alphabet Handwriting Drill works out both the upper and lowercase letters. Trace the alphabet twice then practice doing writing it once on your own!

the supermom handwriting library

Want all my handwriting worksheets & Lined Papers?

get all 124 PDF files WITH JUST one click!

Handwriting Bundle Preview Gray

Just $5.99

$124 value & Available for a limited time at 95% OFF!

34 alphabet worksheets with every letter, numbers & punctuation.

16 themed handwriting worksheets fun for holidays & every month of the year.

10 basic phonics worksheets covering short & long vowels.

32 cursive practice pages with the full alphabet.

36 lined paper templates for everything: from primary lined paper & college rule to graph paper, music staff & more!

Bettijo Bridges

Administrator at Paging Supermom
Bettijo is the founder and designer of Paging Supermom where she shares creative ideas for family fun. Known for practical and kid-friendly activities, free printables and holiday entertainment. Bettijo was a guest on the Martha Stewart Show and has frequently appeared on local TV. Her work has also been featured in national magazines including Real Simple, O, Redbook, Parents, Family Circle, and Health. She enjoys art, retro-modern design, photography and making new things. Mom of 4 kids.

the supermom handwriting library

Want all my handwriting worksheets & Lined Papers?

get all 124 PDF files WITH JUST one click!

Handwriting Bundle Preview Gray

Just $5.99

$124 value & Available for a limited time at 95% OFF!

34 alphabet worksheets with every letter, numbers & punctuation.

16 themed handwriting worksheets fun for holidays & every month of the year.

10 basic phonics worksheets covering short & long vowels.

32 cursive practice pages with the full alphabet.

36 lined paper templates for everything: from primary lined paper & college rule to graph paper, music staff & more!

23 thoughts on “How to Assess and Prepare your Kid’s Kindergarten Readiness”

    • I know how you feel! It was SO hard for me to let Liam go to kindergarten last year. But I loved how happy he was to see me every day after school. Hang in there!!

      Reply
  1. I love these, thank you for making them available. I am having trouble printing the Shooting Star and Alphabet Handwriting Drill is there anyway they can be emailed to me.

    Reply
  2. My daughter is 3 1/2 and she is obsessed with letters. I know she’ll love these worksheets. And oh the scissors.. we just start learning how to use those and it’s pretty adorable. Thanks for the worksheets :)

    Reply
  3. i love your alphabet handwriting drill page i was just wondering if you could add the numbers 0 -9 to the end of it and it would be perfect. i really want to use this to help my four year old and numbers are our hurdle. thanks for the letters it will at least get us started.

    Reply
  4. OMG what a great find!!! My daughter just started kindergarten and loves it, with this SUPER site i will be able to help her improve all her skills.. and at the same time she can help her little brother get excited as well…. this is so great!

    Reply
  5. Hi girls! This is great! I love all your worksheets. My boy already started Kindergarten, but these are perfect for practice. To bad you don’t have them on spanish. Either way they are great! I will use them and share them with proper credit!
    Thanks for sharing!!!

    Fara

    Reply
  6. Thank you for making these printable. I am a missionary in Honduras and am working with pre-school kids to prepare them for Kindergarten. These are great ideas! I agree, I wish they were in Spanish, but they are helpful in any case. The kids I work with live in EXTREME poverty but if they do well their parents pay less for them to attend school, so we are working hard for them to be well prepared!
    Thank you for taking the time to share.
    Mary Lynn Fager
    Tegucigalpa, Honduras

    Reply
    • Did you fill out the form with your name and email address at the bottom of the post? After you fill the form and hit that black “download” button a ZIP file should download to your computer that you can open to view the files inside.

      Reply
  7. MANY PARENTS BELIEVE THAT A CHILD SHOULD START LEARNING LANGUAGES EVEN BEFORE SCHOOL, AND ALSO HAVE TIME TO LEARN AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. I DON’T THINK THIS IS A GOOD TACTIC. A CHILD SHOULD HAVE A CHILDHOOD FIRST AND FOREMOST. THERE ARE SO MANY COOL EDUCATIONAL PLATFORMS OUT THERE NOW. FOR EXAMPLE, ON PROMOVA I FOUND RAP SLANG VOCABULARY, AS WELL AS MANY ARTICLES AND ONLINE COURSES. WHAT I MEAN IS THAT THE CHILD WILL STILL HAVE TIME TO FULLY IMMERSE HIMSELF IN THE LEARNING PROCESS.

    Reply

Leave a Comment