Fall is just around the corner, and for many young children, that means it’s time to attend school for the very first time. As with other major milestones, parents tend to feel unprepared%97even more than their kids. Here’s what to expect and how to help your child through preschool or kindergarten.

Socialization
While your little student isn’t required to know his alphabet or how to count to one hundred in three languages, he does need to have acquired some emotional and social maturity. At this stage, kids are naturally self-centered, not having yet learned how to share or consider other peoples’ feelings and needs.

Attending organized story times at your local bookstore or library is a great way to prepare your child for the quiet, listening times she’ll experience at school. She’ll have the comfort of you being near, and you’ll be able to remind her to listen to the story, stay still and respond when appropriate. Many of these story times include a related craft project, which will help your child develop her listening skills.

Take full advantage of the summer sun and head out to a local park or playground to allow your child time to play with other kids. If your place of worship or community center offers a summer program, consider enrolling your child for a few hours, once a week.

Preschoolers should be able to:

• Listen as you read a picture book, without much shuffling around or unrelated talking.
• Identify letters and numbers as text, opposed to scribbles.
• Follow simple directions.
• Remember characters in stories.
• Begin to react to changes of pace and plot in stories.
• Know that each letter of the alphabet and each number have names.
• Remember some of these names.
• Know how books are held, and that they’re to be read from left to right, top to bottom.
• Know basic shapes like circle, square, triangle, heart, star and flower.
• Know basic colors.
• Know "temper" words, like soft, hard, quiet, loud, hot, cold, fast and slow.
• Understand the rhythm of counting, even if they don’t get the order of the numbers correct every time.
• Match and sort things that are obviously similar and dissimilar.

The following activities will help before and during your child’s preschool year.

Reading
Reading is imperative at every age. As a great parent, you know this and have probably done your part in developing your child’s love of books. Frequent trips to the library and bookstore, reading together as a routine, and even keeping board books within arm’s reach at naptime will nurture your little one’s relationship to reading and writing.