How do you know if your kid is ready for school?

I agree that you should slowly allow her to get used to you leaving her in a new surrounding and see how she does. She will need to get used to you not being around all day long for school but I would not just leave her all day. That might do more damage than good... I am a Pre-School teacher, the kid's are only here for 3 hours a day so they are slowly getting used to the fact that mommy and daddy aren't here but they will be back to get me, they didn't just leave me forever...

My daughter is now in first grade and my son is three years old. When my daughter started kindergarten she knew how to count to 100, her alphabet, how to spell and write her name and also how to read many of the site words. That said, in first grade she is significantly above her grade level and she is easily testing on a third grade level. With my son, I started with the basic preparations for school on his third birthday. I would like him to be at least where Kathryn was when he starts school or even possibly above where she was. Ideally I would like for them to test him directly into first grade because of when his birthday is. I don't work with my children constantly at home, we will do 20-30 minutes of school each day and I think it works out very well for my son. He isn't set to start kindergarten until 2012-2013 so I still have two more years to work with him.

I think a good place to start would be to research what they learn in Kindergarten. Most kindergarten classrooms have a pretty basic curriculum, so it's fairly easy to at least get your child to that point. To work beyond that, however, is really up to you and your daughter. Every child learns at a different pace. For example, by the time I started Kindergarten I was already reading for the most part even though the rest of the class was just learning. It was just because I always had an interest in reading and my mother read to me a lot, so it was something for her to naturally teach me. I would recommend not pushing her too hard into learning because otherwise she might not think school is fun, but it's good for her to have a healthy enjoyment of learning just the same. Try to do fun learning activities with her. For example, I bought my three year old sister a Vtech Smile Baby and she really loves it. It teaches her Sign Language, colors, shapes, and a bunch of other fun things, as well as hand/eye coordination, and it's something that she can do with the family once a day or every other day, so she really enjoys it! At that age, they don't really so much care what they're doing or learning as much as spending time with their parents, I think. :)

My daughter will turn 3 in August. She started attending playschool since last December. For the first 3/4 months, she only goes for half and hour to 1 hour, then we gradually increase. Now she is attending regularly for 4/4.5 hours in a day. It is still difficult sometimes to get her to school. She always says she does not want to go, but once she gets there, she is fine. The only difficult thing is she does not speak the local language, which is Hindi, which makes her not like school in my opinion as she can't talk to or understand other kids. I am sure your daughter would be fine. You might want to do like I did, that is send her for a short period and increase the time gradually.