Graphics
What  my Child should know at the end of Kindergarten?

 

The objective of Kindergarten is not to teach your Child perfect reading, but to prepare the ground for reading, to give him/her desire to read and to provide him/her with very solid bases so that he/she will be able to learn reading  without difficulty during his/her first year in the Primary School. Nevertheless bases given during pre-school  will enable some children to start reading even before entering Primary School.

To say what a child should be able to do  in graphics is very delicate, almost impossible. If I say that he/she must be able to copy words written in cursive writing (small letters), it will not help you much, because all Children can do it at the end of the last year they spend at Kindergarten, but it is the quality of the copy which differs. Some children manage to make small letters and organize the words well on the sheet of paper, whereas others are still very awkward. That corresponds to a maturity and a personal rythm of development which in my opinion must be respected, except if the child is so retarded in graphics that his/her cerebral capacities cannot be expressed : for example, he/she cannot make an exercise of enumeration because he/she has trouble to write the figures, although he/she can count perfectly.

A child who is weak in graphics has a handicap at the beginning, because he/she is slower and his/her work looks less finished, but that will not prevent him/her from progressing in his/her studies.

Some tracks about what your Child should be able to do : he/she should be able to:
* Color without going beyond the lines and without leaving uncolored spots , a relatively simple drawing . 
* At the end of the year, write his/her first name in cursive letters without model. 
* Organize words on a sheet:  recopy words and even a sentence in capital letters,  putting spaces between the words, and not within them, and change line spontaneously when a line is full. 
* Form  correctly a certain number of cursive letters, in the proper direction. 
* Recopy a word in cursive letters between 2 lines (in rather large letters and not the size of a book) or  recopy a word on a line.

The most frequently occurring difficulties and solutions:

* at the beginning of the year, a few children can write from right to left (writing out of mirror); this problem will soon disappear.
* Some children find it difficult  to miniaturize: they make very large letters. Often, they are young and they will develop a better control  later.
* improperly holding the pen: this has to absolutely be corrected.
* in the event  of  real problems in graphics,  it can be useful to consult a psychomotrician ( not a speech therapist !).