What should my child know before kindergarten?

Readiness is less about academics than about a handful of load-bearing skills: recognizing some letters and sounds, counting small groups, following two-step directions, managing basics like bathroom trips independently, and separating from you without distress. The checklist below covers the specific skills, drawn from national curriculum standards.

What if my child cannot do everything on the checklist?

Almost no child starts kindergarten with every box checked, and teachers expect that. The point of a readiness check is to find one or two things worth practicing over the summer, not to gatekeep. If several areas feel far off, your pediatrician or the school's kindergarten team can help you read the picture.

Kindergarten readiness checklist

Most readiness checklists are static PDFs. This one asks you twelve questions about what your child can do today — the twelve skills the rest of kindergarten builds on — and shows you how things look, area by area.

It takes about two minutes, together or from what you’ve noticed. There are no wrong answers, and no child starts with every box checked.

A quick check, together

Twelve of the most load-bearing skills for this age, drawn from the prerequisite graph. Answer from what you’ve seen — there are no wrong answers, and every child’s pace is different.

1.Can your child point to or touch each object exactly once while saying number names?
2.Can your child after counting a set, answer 'how many?' with the last number stated?
3.Can your child hold a pencil with a comfortable tripod or near-tripod grip?
4.Can your child model 'taking away' with physical objects and say how many remain?
5.Can your child read any numeral 0–20 when shown it?
6.Can your child write all digits 0-9 clearly with correct starting points?
7.Can your child model 'putting together' with physical objects and say the total?
8.Can your child recite the number sequence 1–100 without skipping or repeating?
9.Can your child share 10 counters equally between 2 plates?
10.Can your child compose 14 as a group of ten and four ones using objects?
11.Can your child count 2, 4, 6, 8 … up to at least 20?
12.Can your child read 3 + 2 = 5 aloud as 'three plus two equals five'?

0 of 12 answered

What readiness actually means

Kindergarten teachers consistently say the same thing: they can teach letters and numbers. What makes the year land well is a child who can follow two-step directions, hold a crayon with intent, take turns, manage the bathroom independently, and say how they feel in words. The academic pieces — counting small groups, recognizing some letters and sounds, writing a few letters of their name — matter, but they sit on top of those foundations, not in front of them.

The checklist above draws from the same curriculum standards schools use (Common Core and others), broken into the specific, observable skills behind them. If the quick check surfaced an area worth practicing, the learning map below shows every skill in that area, so you can see what small thing to try next.

Learning data: Marble Skill Taxonomy (v1) © Generative Spark, Inc. (Marble) · withmarble.com · licensed under ODbL 1.0 (database) and CC BY-SA 4.0 (content).