School readiness skills: what your child should manage before starting school

School readiness skills cover seven areas your child should manage before starting school. They should be able to look after themselves, cope with feelings and waiting, and concentrate on a task for a few minutes. They should also hold a pencil properly, speak in connected sentences, have a first sense of numbers and get on with other children. Letters and counting to ten are a nice bonus that your child will learn in the first year of school. Independence, concentration and the ability to cope with disappointment, though, they need from the very first day. In a class of twenty children there is only one teacher.

Worksheets have their place, because they train the hand, attention and some concepts. But preparation for school happens all day long. Your child is getting ready for school when they zip up their own coat in the morning and when they wait for their turn on the slide. They are getting ready when they negotiate with a friend over a toy and when they tell you in the evening what they saw on a trip. In this article you will find an overview of all seven areas. For each we add what to look out for and how to practise it at home without making a fuss.

Seven areas of school readiness at a glance

Why worksheets alone are not enough

A worksheet trains what can be done with a pencil on paper. School readiness, however, mostly develops away from paper. Imagine a child who can trace every letter but bursts into tears whenever something does not work out. In the first year of school they will find things harder than a child who does not know the letters but can ask for help and try again.

Experts at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University use the term executive function for this group of skills. It includes working memory (keeping an instruction in mind), self-control (stopping an impulse and waiting) and flexible thinking (trying another way when the first does not work). The Harvard centre compares them to an airport control tower that helps a child plan, focus and juggle several things at once. The good news for parents is that, according to the centre, these skills can be deliberately practised through play.

1. Independence and self-care

At kindergarten each teacher has fewer children, and help with a zip is taken for granted. At school there is no time for it during break. It makes life easier for your child if they can:

• dress and undress, put on their shoes, do up zips and buttons,
• use the toilet on their own, wipe themselves and wash their hands,
• get out and put away their things, find their belongings in the cloakroom,
• eat on their own, open their lunch box and bottle,
• tell an adult when they need something or do not understand.

How to help at home: allow ten extra minutes in the morning and let your child get dressed on their own, even if it takes longer and their socks end up inside out. Give them a hook and a box for their things. Praise the specific thing they did: “You did your zip up all by yourself.”

When to pay attention: if a five-year-old refuses to try things alone and expects adults to do everything, it is rarely laziness. More often the child is used to someone doing it for them faster. A few weeks of patience usually helps.

2. Feelings and self-control

A schoolchild has to sit still, wait until the teacher calls on them, lose a game and not give up when something does not work straight away. It is perfectly fine for your child to feel sad or angry. What matters is that they can name the feeling and handle it without hurting themselves or others.

How to help at home:

• Name feelings out loud: “I can see you’re angry because your tower fell down.” Your child learns that a feeling has a name and can be talked about.
• Play board games where you wait for your turn and can lose, such as Ludo, known in Slovakia as Človeče, nehnevaj sa.
• When your child gets angry, calm them first and only then deal with what happened. Ask: “What could we do differently?”
• Set an example: “I got cross just now, so I’m going to take three deep breaths.”

When to pay attention: if your child regularly lashes out at others or hurts themselves when disappointed, talk to their kindergarten teacher. Together you will find a way to support them. My child bites or hits at kindergarten may also help.

3. Attention and concentration

A preschooler should be able to concentrate on one activity for a few minutes. They should be able to listen to a short two-step instruction (“get your crayons and sit down at the table”) and finish a task even when they are a little bored. The exact length varies between children. What matters is progress over the last year before school.

How to help at home: puzzles, building sets with a model to copy, sorting buttons by colour or pexeso, the memory card game, all help. “Simon says” trains listening and impulse control, because your child has to stop moving when the instruction does not start with the right words. While you play, switch off the television and put the phones away, yours included.

When to pay attention: if your child cannot stay with any activity for even a minute, not even one they enjoy, mention it at the consultation at kindergarten or to your paediatrician.

4. A hand ready for writing

Writing rests on strong, nimble fingers and on hand–eye coordination. Before school it helps if your child:

• holds a pencil properly, with three fingers and without gripping too tightly,
• draws a person with a head, body, arms and legs,
• copies simple shapes, such as a circle, a square and a cross,
• cuts with scissors along a straight and a curved line,
• knows which hand they draw with, and their hand does not tire quickly while drawing.

How to help at home: modelling with clay or dough, threading beads, drawing with chalk on the pavement, cutting things out of leaflets, folding paper, games with clothes pegs and helping with baking all help. A strong, nimble hand is built through play more than by repeating lines in an exercise book. Big movements of the whole arm (drawing on a board or on a large sheet of paper on the wall) matter just as much for a preschooler as small exercises.

When to pay attention: if your child still holds the pencil in their whole fist, drawing hurts or they clearly avoid it, talk to the teacher. Fine motor skills for writing can be supported well before school.

5. Speech and early reading skills

Before school your child should speak in connected, grammatically correct sentences and pronounce all sounds correctly. They should be able to retell a short experience or story in the right order. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) lists among the skills at age four to five that a child finds the front of a book and its title, pretends to read from left to right and recognises some rhymes.

An ear for words also helps: your child can tell which sound a word starts with, clap out syllables (“but-ter-fly”) and find a rhyme (“cat, hat”).

How to help at home: read every day and ask about the story (“what do you think happens next?”), play word games (“think of a word that starts with M”) and talk in the evening about what everyone did.

When to pay attention: if your five-year-old still mispronounces several sounds, see a speech therapist in good time so there is enough time to work on it. You can read more in Speech therapist for children: when is pronunciation a reason to worry. Children in Slovak schools learn to read in Slovak, so this applies to Slovak sounds too.

6. First ideas about numbers

A preschooler does not need to add or subtract. It helps if they:

• compare which group has more and which has fewer, what is longer and what is shorter,
• count objects up to about ten and know that the last number tells you how many there are,
• know the basic shapes and colours,
• understand words like up, down, in front, behind, next to and between.

How to help at home: count the stairs, lay the table together (“how many spoons do we need for the whole family?”), sort the washing by colour and play shop with real coins. Playing shop also teaches your child that money has value.

7. Friends and working together

A large part of the school day is shared work. It helps your child if they can join in a game, take turns, borrow something and give it back, say “sorry” and solve a disagreement with words instead of pushing. Children learn these skills mainly among other children. That is why the group at kindergarten matters so much for a preschooler.

How to help at home: invite friends round to play, play games where you work together (building something, baking a cake) and when a disagreement comes up, help your child say what they want: “Tell him you need the car a bit longer.”

A weekly plan of games that prepare for school

Ten minutes a day is enough. If you spread them across the week, your child practises all seven areas without pressure:

Every evening, add a short retelling of the day: what happened in the morning, at lunch and in the afternoon. Your child practises speech, memory and the order of events.

The year before school: a calendar for parents

• Autumn: talk to the kindergarten teacher about how your child is doing. If you are thinking about another year at kindergarten (what used to be called deferral), start looking into it now rather than waiting until April.
• Winter: if needed, book an appointment at a counselling centre or with a speech therapist. Appointments often need to be arranged well ahead.
• Spring: enrolment (zápis) for primary school. Find out in good time which is your catchment school (spádová škola), the enrolment date and what you will need.
• Summer: plenty of free play, trips and movement. A visit to the future school, the playground next to it or the route your child will walk can also help.

Your child senses how you feel about school. If you talk about school with pleasure and without threats (“at school they’ll teach you to sit still”), they will look forward to it too.

When to consider a consultation or deferral

If you are not sure your child is ready for school, you are not alone. Most parents of preschoolers ask themselves this question. Talk first to the kindergarten teacher, who sees your child among other children every day. If you are still unsure, a counselling centre can help. In Slovakia, continuing at kindergarten, which used to be called deferral, is now decided by the kindergarten head with the agreement of a counselling centre, the paediatrician and the parent. We explain it in detail in School readiness and deferral: how to decide. The obligations of parents of five-year-olds are summed up in Compulsory pre-primary education in Slovakia.

How we do it at Sovička

If your child is five or six, we prepare them for school through our “Me and the World” programme, which is based on the Slovak state curriculum. Throughout the day, through play, they work on fine motor skills for writing, early reading skills, counting, independence and concentration.

In our EQ programme your child learns to name feelings, cope with anger and sadness, come to agreements with a friend and put themselves in others’ shoes. We build their self-confidence, empathy and ability to work together. Through financial literacy they find out that money has value and that it is worth saving for something bigger. Once a week they have our speech-therapy club, Jazýček šikovníček, included in the fee. Because a preschooler needs plenty of movement, they go outside with us every day. Why this matters is explained in Why children need more movement and less sitting.

We follow your child’s progress through educational assessment. At an individual consultation you will find out what their strengths are and what they still need. Sovička is authorised to provide compulsory pre-primary education, so your child can complete it at any of our three kindergartens. There is more on our Pre-school year page. The whole programme is on our Curriculum page.

If you are looking for a place for your preschooler, book a visit at a quiet time, when the kindergarten is not busy. We will tell you what their preparation for school would look like with us.