What is Readiness?
Readiness means a level of physical and mental maturity at which the child is able to meet the requirements of the task with understanding, interest and relative ease and when he wants to do so.

Factors Influencing Readiness
1. Physical Ability

• Large muscle skills
• Small muscle skills
• Physical health- concentrate

2. Socio Emotional Maturity

• Social growth- ability to share, waits for turn, participates in group activities, adapts to routines.
• Emotional growth- exhibits self control, respects others, assumes responsibility and shows self confidence.

3. Intellectual abilities

• Thinking ability- understands and remembers
• Understands that symbols stand for real objects.
• Pre-planning ability.
• Context- View things in relation with others.
• Ability to classify- groups according to various criteria
• Ability to observe.
• Ability to discriminate- distinguishes between same/different, picks small details
• Ability to sequence- can describe beginning/middle/end/next/before/what’s missing
• Ability to follow directions accurately
• Ability to work from left to right and top to bottom.

4. Language Skills

• Free use of native language
• Language production- vocabulary growth/ sentence formation
• Listening skills- analyzing and comprehending what is said and heard

5. Previous and background Experiences

• Direct experiences- at school and at home
• Vicarious experiences- story/T.V/games/films

6. Perceptual Skills

• Visual Perceptual skills- visual discrimination Observing/differentiating/identifying/distinguishing/visual memory Auditory perception skills Discrimination/ memory and recall
• Kinesthetic Tactile Skills other than auditory and vision

WHY READINESS IS IMPORTANT?

• It prevents the chances of failure
• Learning disabilities are recognized at different stages
• Not all children get matured at the same time
• Not all children are equally attentive or motivated
• Children don’t have adequate personal socio-emotional development
• Children have different learning styles

Informal activities for Readiness
1. Free Play Activities

• Sand play Reconstructive activity/freedom/space to matter/imagination/initiative
• Water play- capacity/liquids flow
• Clay work
• Block play- proportion/mathematical relationships/imagination
• Dolls corner
• Coloring and painting
• Threading beads
• Lacing
• Paper tearing

2. Experiential Learning -Children learn and build on their experiences. Children learn from observing, experiencing and questioning .This involves the need to communicate. It is language that is needed for reading, writing and math. The first thing that a baby experiences is language and Experience is the root of language learning. Experience is important for any kind of readiness.
Multi Sensorial Experiences

• As all the senses have to be developed for learning, children need to be given experiences to sharpen their senses so that they learn to discriminate between similar and different. Everyone should have enough exposure to sensory experience so that their senses are developed; their nerves are opened up and are functioning at their maximum.

• If children are trained to use all their senses to help describe, they will be stimulated to think more creatively.

• Good experience leads to better communication capacity.

• Experience leads to better Language, and they can draw Pictures of what they know.

• As far as Symbols are concerned, a combination of pictures as well as the letters may be shown at the same time.

• Flash cards with large handwriting are a good way to introduce symbols, as children are able to recognize patterns.

• Skills that need to be fostered for reading and writing readiness are concentration, reading from left to right, top to bottom.

Acronyms for Learning

• An important acronym to remember is ELPS, which are Experience, Language, Picture and Symbol.

• The other acronym that is important for language learning is LSRW, that is, Listening (auditory perception; auditory memory; auditory association), Speaking (perceive relationship between spoken and written language), Reading and Writing.