Last week, I sat in an elementary school cafeteria with other families and listened to my daughter’s future kindergarten teacher talk about what the fall would look like. My daughter isn’t even there yet, and I already felt it: That mix of pride and worry that comes with watching your child get ready to step into something bigger. 

I’ve been in early childhood education for over 20 years—from teacher, to director, to the corporate side. I’ve helped hundreds of families prepare their children for this exact moment. And still, sitting in that orientation, I was “just” a mom hoping her kid would be okay. 

The Spring 2026 issue of Educating Young Children is focused entirely on the preschool-to-kindergarten transition and reading it this week hit me differently than it might have at any other time. Because what it makes clear, across every article, is that kindergarten readiness isn’t something that happens to a child in the weeks before school starts. It gets built, day by day, within families and inside preschool and kindergarten programs that understand their roles in what comes next. 

The Bridge Must Be Built on Both Sides

One article follows two educators, a kindergarten teacher and a pre-K teacher, working in the same building, who spent years building intentional connections between their programs. Same books. Same vocabulary. Same classroom signage, so something familiar is already waiting when a child walks through the door in August. Every fall, their preschoolers read Pumpkin Jack. When those same children arrive in kindergarten, they read it again and this time take the pumpkin outside, watch it decompose, and document what they see. Same book. Deeper learning. Someone planned for the child who was coming, not just the child who was there. 

That kind of continuity—between a preschool educator who knows where children are headed and a kindergarten teacher who knows where children have been—is one of the most practical things a program can invest in. NAEYC-accredited programs build this into how they operate. Educators are expected to know and engage with the broader early learning community, to share what they know about individual children, and to treat the preschool-to-kindergarten transition as part of their professional responsibility rather than someone else’s job to manage. The bridge doesn’t appear in August. It gets built across the whole year, and the child is the one who gets to walk across it. 

Every Child Needs a Bridge That Holds

Not every child starts from the same place. 

Some are navigating a new language at the same time they’re navigating a new school. Some have supports in place that their families spent years fighting for and hope will survive the move to a new building. Some have families who love them fiercely and are doing everything right yet can’t support the transition because needed information isn’t reaching them in a language they understand. 

You know these children. Some may be in your program right now. 

A kindergarten teacher in this article learned that a child coming into her class felt safest when he could see his whole day laid out in front of him. Before the first day of school, she built him a visual schedule and sent it home. His family sat with him and walked through his first morning together, at their kitchen table, before it ever happened. He walked into kindergarten already knowing what came next. 

That moment was possible because somewhere earlier, a program decided that knowing this child, really knowing him, was part of the job. Not the extra part. The whole point. 

NAEYC Accreditation is built around the belief that every child deserves a program that sees them fully, prepares for them specifically, and builds the kind of relationship with their family that makes the hardest transitions feel like the next step forward rather than a leap into the unknown. It asks programs to know each child’s home language, family values, and individual needs and to let that knowledge shape the curriculum and environment. Not as a workaround. As the foundation. When a program does that work well, every child arrives at kindergarten with something no checklist can measure: The experience of having been truly known. 

Families Don’t Hand Off at the Door

Sitting in that cafeteria, I looked around at the other families. Some were taking notes. Some were nodding. A lot of them looked the way I felt: Hopeful and a little uncertain. Wondering if their child would find a friend. Wondering if the teacher would see them. Wondering if they would be safe. 

What struck me wasn’t the information being shared. It was the feeling in the room. These families weren’t anxious because they hadn’t prepared. They were anxious because they love their children. 

What they needed wasn’t a better handout. They needed to already be in a relationship with someone who knew their child, had been walking alongside their family all year, and could say with confidence: She’s ready. He’s going to find his people. You can let yourself feel the excitement now, not just the worry. 

That’s what the family-focused article in this issue understands. The transition to kindergarten is a yearlong conversation between early learning programs and the families they serve. This includes proactive communication and invitations into a child’s learning—not just updates. Relationships should be built deeply enough so that when the moment comes, a family isn’t just receiving a packet at the new school’s door. They’re already ready. 

NAEYC accreditation is built on this same belief: That family partnership isn’t a courtesy, but a practice that shows up in how programs communicate, listen, and use what families share to shape what happens for every child. 

And when it works, a child walks into kindergarten in August carrying something you can’t put on a checklist—the feeling that the people who knew them best made sure they were ready. 

What Reading This Issue Reminded Me

Educating Young Children gives you the research, the stories, and the specific strategies. NAEYC Accreditation gives you the framework to make those practices consistent, sustainable, and present for every child, not just the ones whose teachers happened to think of it. 

The work described in this issue is happening in programs everywhere, in the quiet moments of preparation that families never see and children never forget. I know this because I’ve done the work on both sides of it. And I’ve sat in a kindergarten cafeteria as a parent, grateful for every educator who poured themselves into this transition before my daughter ever walked through those doors. 

Read the Spring Issue of Educating Young Children

There are more stories like these inside, alongside research-backed strategies you can bring back to your program, your team, and the families counting on you. 

Explore NAEYC Accreditation

If this issue resonated with you, accreditation is the natural next step. It’s the framework that turns the practices you just read about into the standard every child in your program can count on.

Explore NAEYC Accreditation