Kindergarten is a year of learning. It’s when kids learn to write and read, understand the concept of time and get their first taste of math.
It’s also when they gain a new level of independence as they take on new responsibilities and work with peers. This is what makes kindergarten such an exciting grade for both students and teachers!
Social and Emotional Development
Unlike preschool, kindergarten often offers children more opportunities to play with friends. Teachers encourage children to work together, listen to each other, and resolve disagreements. They also teach kids about their families, languages, and cultures.
Your child will learn to recognize and write both uppercase and lowercase letters and match them with their sounds, as well as read about 30 high-frequency words (also called sight words). He’ll also learn to count, understand the size of groups and objects, and compare numbers and shapes.
Because learning is a social process, healthy emotional and social development is crucial for students’ success. Research has shown that children who are emotionally healthy tend to be more engaged in class, have fewer problem behaviors, and perform better on tests.
Language and Literacy Development
In kindergarten, kids will learn the alphabet, upper and lower case letters, their sounds and how to identify them in print. They’ll also begin to experiment with writing and reading simple books. In math, they’ll build on the skills they learned in preschool by learning numbers, shapes and basic addition and subtraction.
Kids will also start to gain new vocabulary by using more sophisticated language in their play and having class conversations with teachers. Research shows that children who enter kindergarten with larger vocabularies tend to be better readers, because they spend less time decoding words and more time making sense of the text.
New America is working to elevate the most important research about teaching and learning in kindergarten, share bright spots and promote state and local policies that create conditions for children to thrive.
Physical Development
A child’s physical development enables them to explore their environment. Physical play improves children’s bone and muscle strength and helps them maintain a healthy weight. It also promotes social skills and emotional resilience.
Kindergarten is a non-compulsory form of education for four to six year olds that prepares them for the first grade. It is a part of the Dutch basic education (basisonderwijs).
Kindergartners will learn to recognize and name all 26 uppercase letters, their correct sounds, and about 30 high-frequency words, known as sight words. They will also begin to add and subtract small numbers. Physical learning opportunities that incorporate team sports, music, and creative movement help develop coordination, rhythm, and self-expression. They will also develop more refined gross and fine motor skills.
Creative Arts
Creativity appears in many forms, including visual art, music, dance and drama. Activities that involve creativity stimulate various areas of the brain and foster cognitive development, such as problem-solving skills and spatial awareness.
Children enjoy making art with materials like colored paper, fabric scraps, buttons and feathers. Collaborating with peers on an artistic project develops social skills and teaches teamwork.
Kindergarten students are adventurous and intuitive, and have difficulty isolating information logically from their environment. Their drawings often lack realistic proportion and tend to combine items indiscriminately rather than categorizing them logically.
Providing opportunities to dance and move freely to music develops children’s motor skills and encourages imaginative play. Introduce a range of musical styles and use recorded models to help children echo-sing songs.
Technology
Some schools are allowing students as young as kindergarten to learn basic computer skills. They are using block based coding environments and developing keyboarding skills and digital citizenship awareness within a safe online environment.
Kids are also introduced to websites such as Shidonni which allows them to draw their favourite animal and watch it come to life, eat and play. This is a great way for kindergarteners to develop their fine motor skills and use their imagination.
It is important that kindergarten students learn to be responsible users of technology and how to integrate it into their learning. While it is often debated whether children should be exposed to such technologies at such a young age, it has been shown that when used correctly, these tools can help kindergarten students learn.