Kindergarten Expectations

During his or her kindergarten experience, your child will experience many activities in all areas of development.

Social:

• Develop positive self-esteem.

• Learn to work and play with others.

• Learn to work independently.

• Learn to follow directions and classroom expectations.

• Demonstrate respectful and responsible behaviors.

• Be polite and kind.

Physical:

• Learn to use classroom equipment and supplies appropriately.

• Develop large motor skills involving body movement and coordination through running, skipping and rhythmic activities.

• Develop small motor skills by using clay, tracing activities and cutting.

Reading Readiness

Kindergarten is a critical time to lay the foundation for becoming a successful reader.  Your child will learn to:

• Recognize and name both upper and lower case letters.

• Correctly say each letter’s sound.

Your child will learn basic concepts of print:                       

• holding a book correctly;

• tracking words left to right;

• reading from the top to the bottom of the page;

• identifying the front and back cover and title page;

• understanding the correlation between spoken and printed words.

Your child will learn beginning reading skills:

• Identify initial and final sounds in spoken words.

• Identify rhyming and non-rhyming words (sun/run vs. sun/man).

• Determine word meanings from the way they’re used in a sentence.

• Identify characters, setting, and key events in a story.

• Retell stories in correct sequence.

• Follow two and three-step directions using picture clues

• Identify facts in non-fiction text.

Writing

Early writing skills are reported using one of five stages, showing continual growth from kindergarten through the primary grades.

• Stage 1 involves pictures and scribbling.

• Stage 2 moves your child to the use of random letters, sometimes with correct initial sounds.

• Stage 3 involves the use of initial sounds or both the initial and final sounds—mostly  consonants (i.e., lk for like).

• Stage 4 increases the use of vowels (lk becomes lik).  As the words become longer, students begin to show an understanding of multiple-syllable words.

• Stage 5 uses many correctly-spelled words in multiple, related sentences.  

Kindergarten writing objectives involve:

• Generating story ideas as a class and drawing pictures to match.

• Working as a group to draft a story.

• Writing from left to right and showing space between words.

• Writing the alphabet in both upper and lower case letters.

• Writing first and last name on school papers.

Mathematics

• Count to 100.  

• Identify and write numbers through 20 (in or out of order).   

• Identify the symbols +, -, = and learn simple addition and subtraction through number 10.

• Understand the concepts of above/below/between, smaller/larger, longer/shorter.

• Identify and name shapes (circle, square, oval, triangle, rhombus, rectangle, and hexagon).

• Sort objects by size, color and shape.

• Create a variety of simple graphs.

• Match numerals to sets of objects.

Science 

Introduction to:                                                     

• Senses

• Earth

• Weather

• Physical Science

• Environmental Science

Social Studies

Understanding:

• Community Helpers

• Holidays and Seasonal Customs

• Maps and Globes