Strategies to Prepare Multilingual Children for Kindergarten
The transition to kindergarten begins early and should be embedded well before the last day of preschool( see“ Building Bridges Toward Success: Strategies for Seamless Kindergarten Transitions” by Lori L. Blake and colleagues in this issue). By considering children’ s languages and cultures during this process, you enrich each child’ s learning journey. Following, we draw on our experiences to outline ways to prepare and support multilingual children and their families for the preschool-to-kindergarten move.
Become Familiar with Kindergarten Content
Preschool educators, directors, and administrators need to be aware of what children will be expected to know once they begin kindergarten. Many public school districts and private kindergarten programs publish this information on their websites. Make a plan to share it with families, offering explanations and translating the information into their home languages. Some teachers do this in a handout, an email, or during conversations with family members.
activities highlighting words like more / less, fast / slow, or bigger / smaller in multiple languages. As kindergarten teachers learn more about the developmentally appropriate goals of the preschool curriculum, they can adjust their expectations for the first months of school to more closely match the skills and content knowledge children will likely have.
While we do not advise preschool teachers to mimic kindergarten classrooms, you can use the knowledge you gain about local kindergarten programs to partner with families and introduce content to multilingual children in responsive ways.
This could include
› Reading books, engaging with illustrations, and teaching the alphabet and sounds in a child’ s home language. This helps them learn how print works, so they can apply this knowledge to learning sounds and words in English. It also supports comprehension and connections between languages. Monolingual educators can use technologies like Google Translate and Head Start’ s Ready DLL mobile app to help translate words. You can also find online videos of stories being read aloud in multiple languages.
It’ s also helpful to build two-way relationships in which preschool and elementary teachers and administrators share information. This allows you to ask kindergarten teachers about expectations for children when they start the new year and to share about the goals and content of the preschool curriculum.
For example, after learning that local kindergarten teachers want to use comparison words in several lessons during September, preschool teachers could add more stories and
30 Educating Young Children
Spring 2026