Kindergarten is a year of wonder and joy. Children learn in a variety of ways, including physical development, language and literacy development, cognitive development, and creative expression.
In addition to traditional learning, children also develop a range of other skills that help them thrive in the classroom. For example, they often learn to recognize and write the letters of their name through a weekly reading routine.
Social and Emotional Development
While kindergarten is a time for children to learn their ABCs and 123s, it’s also a time for them to develop social emotional learning skills. These are the skills that help kids build healthy relationships and become independent learners.
These skills include forming close and trustworthy friendships, appropriately expressing a wide range of emotions, and enjoying interactions with new people and exploring unfamiliar environments. Teachers can support this development by using literature to teach about characters that kindergarteners can identify with, and by incorporating story-based activities in the classroom that build students’ empathy and sharing skills.
Teaching social-emotional skills can be a challenge for early childhood teachers. However, many studies show that young children’s social and emotional skills are more important than their reading ability. To help teachers develop a social-emotional curriculum for kindergarten, the Penn GSE team has created a toolkit called Conquering Kindergarten that includes scientifically valid measures of 14 different social-emotional skills.
Language and Literacy Development
During kindergarten, children develop emergent literacy skills that are the foundation for reading and writing. These skills are receptive (the ability to listen and understand language) and expressive (the ability to communicate their ideas and feelings through speech).
Emerging literacy skills include alphabet knowledge, rhyming awareness, phonemic awareness, print awareness, and vocabulary. These skills are largely influenced by the interaction children have with adults. For example, a teacher might read books to kids or ask them to identify all the signs that have writing on them to promote print awareness.
Students who enter kindergarten with large vocabularies tend to be better readers. Teachers can help kids build their vocabularies by reading books in their home language with them and by sending them home with L1 text. Parents and caregivers can also support children’s English literacy development by continuing nightly shared reading practices at home. This helps children see reading as fun and motivating, rather than an intimidating academic skill.
Cognitive Development
As kids move into kindergarten, their bodies and minds undergo tremendous changes. Although each child develops according to their own unique timeline, there are certain core cognitive milestones they must hit. These are important because they prepare children for a life of learning and set them up to succeed in their educational journeys.
Children develop their thinking (cognitive) skills by observing the world around them, trying new things, and comparing information. This includes their ability to focus and to understand the relationships between objects. In high-quality kindergarten programs, children learn to use their imaginations and approach problems creatively.
For example, by combining movement with maths games children strengthen their coordination and concentration. Activities such as solving puzzles compel children to strategize, enhance spatial awareness, and build problem-solving abilities. Similarly, simple counting activities improve numeracy skills and lay the foundation for future mathematical thinking. Additionally, art-based activities encourage children to categorize, sort, and group objects. In addition, tracing shapes and patterns builds fine motor skills and attention to detail.
Independent and Self-Assurance
Independence and self-assurance are vital to a child’s development, especially in kindergarten. It is during this time when children can build a foundation that will last them throughout their academic career and beyond.
Providing children with opportunities to explore their surroundings, make choices, and face the consequences cultivates independence. This also promotes a strong sense of self-worth, fostering a desire to learn and grow.
When children are able to solve their own problems, they develop much-needed critical thinking skills. This ability to think independently helps kids to tackle difficult situations later in life, empowering them to thrive even when faced with challenges.
Help kids to gain independence by assigning age-appropriate chores, allowing them to choose their own activities, and offering free play time. This will give them the chance to practice and perfect their decision-making, and they can learn how to power through frustration when they run into a roadblock – a lesson well worth milk spills and mismatched socks!