Kindergarten Year at a Glance

Welcome to Kindergarten! Throughout the year, students will grow as readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and members of their classroom community. Here is a look at some of the exciting learning happening each quarter!

🍎 Quarter 1

📚 Reading & Writing

• Build strong classroom and literacy routines.

• Learn letter names, sounds, and correct letter formation.

• Begin using sounds to read and write words.

• Ask and answer questions about stories and informational texts.

• Identify the main topic and important details in a text.

• Practice retelling familiar stories.

• Use drawings, labels, and beginning writing to share ideas.

• Learn what makes a complete sentence and begin using nouns and verbs.

🌎 Social Studies

• Learn what it means to be part of a classroom and school community.

• Explore why communities have rules and why following them is important.

• Discuss how people work together and contribute to their communities.

• Begin learning about citizenship and what makes our American community special.

🔢 Math

• Build a positive math community by learning to share and explain mathematical thinking.

• Describe, sort, and compare objects by attributes such as size, length, and shape.

• Use positional words to describe where objects are located.

• Develop early counting skills and connect numbers to quantities.

• Practice recognizing small groups of objects without counting each one.

• Focus on numbers 0–10 while building toward counting to 20 and beyond.

• Practice writing numerals and answering “How many?”

🔬 Science

• Explore the physical properties of objects, including size, color, shape, texture, weight, and flexibility.

• Investigate how different materials are useful for different purposes.

• Observe, record, and discuss daily weather and how it changes throughout the year.

🍂 Quarter 2

📚 Reading & Writing

• Continue strengthening letter-sound knowledge and letter formation.

• Use pictures and words together to understand stories and nonfiction texts.

• Identify the main topic and connect important details.

• Explore how authors and illustrators help us understand a text.

• Retell important events and discuss story settings.

• Write simple sentences and begin expanding sentences with more details.

• Begin informational writing by gathering and sharing information about a topic.

🌎 Social Studies

• Explore how life changes from the past to the present.

• Compare homes, schools, jobs, transportation, toys, and other parts of life then and now.

• Learn how inventors have influenced the way people live.

• Recognize similarities and differences between people's lives and experiences.

🔢 Math

• Strengthen counting and number-writing skills.

• Work toward counting to 50 by ones and tens.

• Compare groups using words such as more, less, and the same.

• Connect written numerals to quantities.

• Continue developing an understanding of one more and number relationships.

• Identify, describe, and compare two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes.

• Explore what makes a shape a particular shape, regardless of its size, color, or position.

• Build and combine shapes using hands-on materials.

🔬 Science

• Investigate the position and movement of objects and living things.

• Use positional words such as above, below, beside, between, in front of, and behind.

• Explore different types of movement, including straight, zigzag, round and round, back and forth, fast, and slow.

• Continue observing and recording daily weather.

❄️ Quarter 3

📚 Reading & Writing

• Compare and contrast events, ideas, and texts.

• Use illustrations and text details to deepen understanding.

• Make connections between texts on the same topic.

• Continue practicing comprehension strategies such as asking questions, retelling, visualizing, and identifying important information.

• Strengthen handwriting fluency and legibility.

• Expand sentences using details such as who, what, when, and where.

• Use words such as because and but to express more complex ideas.

• Develop narrative writing by drawing, writing, and/or dictating about a focused topic.

🌎 Social Studies

• Learn how maps and other representations help us understand where places are located.

• Explore how natural resources influence where and how people live.

• Use positional and geographic vocabulary to describe locations.

• Learn that communities around the world have different cultures, foods, clothing, languages, and traditions.

• Practice positive character traits such as empathy, resilience, respect, honesty, and fairness.

🔢 Math

• Continue building fluency with counting to 100 by ones and tens.

• Compare numbers and quantities.

• Explore one more and one less relationships.

• Break numbers apart and put them back together in different ways.

• Explore different ways to make 5 and 10.

• Develop an understanding of part-part-whole relationships.

• Begin representing addition and subtraction with objects, drawings, actions, and stories.

• Solve beginning addition and subtraction word problems within 10.

🔬 Science

• Observe and compare changes in the environment caused by weather.

• Collect and discuss information about daily weather.

• Compare weather patterns across different seasons.

• Continue tracking weather throughout the year.

🌷 Quarter 4

📚 Reading & Writing

• Apply previously learned comprehension strategies to increasingly complex stories and informational texts.

• Continue strengthening speaking, listening, reading, and vocabulary skills.

• Use complete sentences and distinguish between complete sentences and fragments.

• Continue building fluent, legible handwriting.

• Write for different purposes using increasingly independent drawings and writing.

• Explore opinion writing and learn to support an opinion with reasons.

• Read, talk, and write about topics connected to communities, needs, wants, goods, and services.

🌎 Social Studies

• Explore the difference between needs and wants.

• Learn that people make choices about how to use limited resources.

• Discover how people in a community provide goods and services.

• Consider how different community members help meet the needs and wants of others.

🔢 Math

• Continue solving addition and subtraction problems within 10 using objects, drawings, and other strategies.

• Compose and decompose numbers in different ways.

• Build fluency with number relationships learned throughout the year.

• Explore teen numbers 11–19 as a group of ten ones plus additional ones.

• Represent teen numbers with objects and drawings.

• Apply counting, comparing, geometry, measurement, and number skills learned throughout kindergarten.

🔬 Science

• Compare living and nonliving things and describe their characteristics.

• Explore the basic needs, growth, movement, and changes of living things.

• Learn how animals use different body parts to move, find food, and protect themselves.

• Compare plants and animals to identify similarities and differences.

• Continue observing weather and discussing changes throughout the year.