Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten!

On April 26th, I will not only be the bawling basketcase standing in line at Kindergarten registration, I will be the nervous competimommy pacing back and forth while Monkey Man is tested for readiness.

So when Parent Bloggers contacted me about my interest in reviewing Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten! I was intrigued. Hey, we've been paying out the wazoo to send him to The World's Most Expensive Preschool for five years now - what better way to see if we've gotten our money's worth?


Let's face it - when kindergarten time rolls around you are afraid. How is my kid going to stack up with the other kids? My kid can't remember to cover his mouth when he coughs, how is he ever going to remember his shapes or numbers?

Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten is an amazing book. First of all, the entire book is laminated, allowing you to use a dry-erase marker wherever you want. And it wipes completely off with no traces of marker left (unlike some other alleged "wipe-off" books we've tried before). I liked the size, too - I was able to tuck it into my bag easily and tote it along on a few outings where I knew we'd have some time to kill and it was perfect. Each page has a separate activity, so you can touch on things fairly quickly and move onto the next thing.




After being bombarded with knowledge all day long at The World's Most Expensive Preschool, I knew that Monkey Man would probably show some resistance to the book. Heck, half the time it's a death match to get him to do his homework. Well, not with Let's Get Ready. He immediately started going through page by page, asking questions and we worked our way through the entire book in about twenty minutes. He was intrigued with the sample telephone key pad where you can practice dialing your telephone number - a very handy skill to have, and I'm hoping he only uses it for good versus learning to dial any 900 numbers. Ahem.

Not only does each page have a different activity, but at the bottom you have "Mrs. Good", the teacher, who suggests other things you can do on the page - like "Can you name another pair of opposites?" I liked that feature a lot - not only did they have some creative ideas, but sometimes just a word of encouragement like "Magnificent!"

So when all was said and done, Monkey Man did very well. He has a few weak areas like skip counting, but we have enough time to work on that so hopefully by the time school starts he'll have no problem at all. And the cool part is that every few days since we got the book, he's brought it out of his backpack and asked to work on it with me or my husband. And considering how overloaded he is after a day at preschool, I'd say that's a ringing endorsement.


Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten! has a sister book, Let's Get Ready for First Grade! Both are available for purchase from the publisher, Cedar Valley Publishing, and if you want to get a jumpstart on making sure your child is ready, I highly recommend this book. I already have plans to use it all summer as a refresher, both for Monkey Man and myself.

Want a chance to win these cool books? Stop on by at Parent Bloggers and post a comment on any of the posts about the Let's Get Ready series, and a winner will be selected at random to receive a free set of these books. How cool is that?