Ready?

Q. I'm the preschool director of a school with a strong philosophy that children learn best through play. Each year, more parents are lobbying for academics. They're afraid their kids won't be ready for kindergarten.

Kids instinctively know the way to kindergarten. The path is full of books, blocks and monkey bars, with not a worksheet in sight.

"The way to prepare a child is not to push academics earlier and earlier," says Joy Warner, director of Children's Community School, a charter elementary school in Davidson. "Preschoolers need to get messy, run and pedal, play games, sing songs and resolve conflicts. That's the way to prepare children for kindergarten."

Beyond choosing a play-based setting before kindergarten, parents have their own jobs to do at home, Warner and other educators say. At the top of the list: Read, read, read to your children. Have fun with books and words. And practice self-help skills such as how to button a jacket, zip pants and wash hands after a trip to the bathroom.

There's no one qualifying factor for kindergarten readiness. Even states disagree, by four months, on an age cut-off date for starting school. Kindergarten readiness assessment is complex, particularly when a child's birthday is near the cut-off date. In the wide span of what's normal, it's typical for 4- and 5-year-olds to race ahead in some areas of social, emotional, physical and academic development but to lag in others -- then catch up.

Talk to your child's preschool teachers and be ready for an honest evaluation about where your child falls on this partial school readiness checklist for kindergarten:

• Follows verbal instructions and listens to stories without interrupting.

• Manages clothes and bathroom needs.

• Expresses his wants and needs, and his teachers and peers are able to understand what he says.

• Working on fine motor skills such as holding a marker, cutting and tracing.

• Likes books, tells stories based on pictures, and is aware of the sounds of words.

• Sorts similar objects by color, size and shape.

• Shares and take turns.

• Has impulse control and improved attention span.

Also, keep in mind that different schools have different expectations.

Visit a kindergarten class at the school where your child is likely to attend. Imagine: How would your child fit in? In the end, Warner says, "gut instinct" needs to play a big role in a decision about whether your child is ready for the leap to kindergarten.

Betsy Flagler of Davidson writes Parent to Parent, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and teaches preschool at Davidson College Presbyterian Church. She also teaches some after-school enrichment classes at CCS for the Children's Art Project.