School Readiness: The Occupational Therapy Checklist

When parents think about school readiness, they usually think of letters, numbers and writing a name. Teachers will tell you something different: the children who settle into Kindergarten most easily aren't necessarily the ones who can read — they're the ones who can manage their belongings, sit on the mat, open their lunchbox, cope with disappointment and join in play.

Those are occupational therapy's home ground. At Square One Therapy Hub in Kogarah, our OT team runs school readiness assessments for families across the St George area in the year before school. Here's the checklist we actually use — organised by what school genuinely demands.

Fine motor skills

By the start of Kindergarten, most children can:

• Hold a pencil with a functional grip (not necessarily perfect) and control it well enough to draw a person with several body parts
• Copy basic shapes — circle, cross, square, and attempt a triangle
• Cut along a straight line with scissors and attempt simple shapes
• Manage buttons and zips on their own clothing
• Build with small construction toys, thread beads, do simple puzzles

If your child is still developing these, our guide to pre-writing skills covers the foundations and how to build them through play. Writing letters is not required before school — the underlying control is what matters.

Self-care and independence

School runs on low-level independence, dozens of times a day:

• Opens their own lunchbox, drink bottle, and food packaging (test this with the actual lunchbox — it's the single most common first-week frustration)
• Manages toileting independently, including clothing and handwashing
• Puts on and takes off jumper, hat and shoes
• Unpacks and packs their own bag
• Blows their own nose

None of these need to be perfect. All of them improve fast with a term of deliberate practice at home — which is exactly why the year before school is the right time to look.

Attention and following instructions

• Sits and attends to an adult-led activity for 10–15 minutes
• Follows two-step instructions ("put your book in your bag and line up at the door")
• Completes a short task without an adult alongside the whole time
• Transitions between activities without falling apart, most of the time

Emotional regulation

The Kindergarten day is long, structured and full of small disappointments — not being first, not getting the red one, getting something wrong. Helpful pre-school skills:

• Recovers from frustration within a few minutes with minimal adult help
• Separates from parents without prolonged distress (a wobbly first fortnight is normal)
• Copes with changes to routine when given a heads-up
• Uses words, not just behaviour, to communicate a problem at least some of the time

Children with sensory sensitivities often find the noise and busyness of a classroom the biggest hurdle of all — our sensory processing page covers how OT helps with exactly this.

Play and social skills

• Takes turns and shares (imperfectly — this is a work in progress for every five-year-old)
• Joins other children's play rather than only playing alongside
• Engages in pretend play with ideas of their own
• Manages losing a game without a full meltdown, at least sometimes

Speech and language sit right alongside these — see our companion checklist of speech milestones before Kindy.

How to use this list

Don't score it. No child ticks every box, and Kindergarten teachers expect a wide range. Use it to spot clusters: a child who struggles across most of one section — most of the fine motor items, or most of the regulation items — is telling you where a term of targeted support would pay off.

And a note on timing: the useful window is the year before school, ideally the first half of it. That leaves time for support to work before orientation days, and — where bigger needs emerge — time for conversations with the school about transition support.

What a school readiness assessment involves

Our OTs spend 60–90 minutes with your child across play-based tasks and standardised measures covering fine motor, visual-motor, self-care, attention and regulation, then talk you through the findings the same day. You get a written summary with specific, practical recommendations — things to practise at home, and whether a block of therapy is worth it. Sometimes the answer is "they're ready, relax" — a result families are always glad to have in writing.

Funding and booking

We welcome self-managed and plan-managed NDIS participants (funding details), Medicare CDM referrals, private health via HICAPS, and private bookings — no referral needed.

We're at 4 Short Street, Kogarah, serving Hurstville, Rockdale, Carlton, Ramsgate and the Sutherland Shire. Get in touch to book a school readiness assessment for next year's Kindy start.