Kindergarten is your child’s first introduction to academic learning. Children learn in a variety of ways, including through play and exploration.
Kindergarteners learn about shapes, numbers and basic addition and subtraction. They also practice their fine motor skills by drawing and constructing.
Emotional development helps your child recognize and understand his own feelings and the feelings of others. Teachers encourage children to cooperate with and respect one another.
Language Arts
Students learn to express themselves creatively through a variety of activities, including singing and playing musical instruments. They also engage in imaginative play and use their creativity to create their own storylines. Kindergarteners develop their vocabulary by interacting with various types of literature and games that emphasize word walls, context clues and read alouds. They will also begin to recognize sight words through interactive games and shared reading.
They will also discover the connection between letters and sounds by learning to phonologically understand, identify, isolate, manipulate, add, blend and delete phonemes in spoken language. They will practice basic tracing and printing skills, and they will learn to write the alphabet in upper and lower case. They will also begin to learn how to read short texts, using pictures and other context clues to make predictions and ask questions about the text.
Math
Kindergarten students learn the numbers 0 and 5, how to add and subtract, the days of the week, basic money skills, time concepts, and basic graphing. They also start to recognize patterns, a skill that helps them understand the world around them.
Mathematically proficient students in Kindergarten carefully look for structures and patterns in the number system and other areas of mathematics. For example, kindergartners notice that adding 1 to a group of four results in five because they understand the concept of commutative property.
They also begin to see the difference between 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes, a process known as sorting and classifying. Your kindergartner may even begin to sort her toys into groups of the same kinds, or order her stuffed animals by height.
Social Studies
Early childhood is a critical time for building the foundations of social studies. Social studies focuses on learning about social systems, the abstract societal norms and values that affect all humans, and developing civic competence and disciplinary literacies (Mindes, 2015).
Kindergarten children learn about their homes and classroom, local and national symbols, American holidays, and history. Teachers encourage students to question societal systems and values and develop an awareness of how they affect their lives.
Kindergartners also learn about geography and economics. Teachers have found that social studies combines elements of the subjects of history, geography, civics, and sociology, even though each subject may not always receive as much class time as the term social studies implies. This integration of subjects has convinced educators that they need to devote more time to social studies.
Science
In kindergarten, kids explore the world around them and begin to develop organized and analytical thinking. Although science curriculum varies by state and by school, most kindergartners will learn similar concepts.
Children discover that materials have properties, such as shape, size, color, temperature, odor, flexibility and weight. They also learn that these properties can be observed and measured. For example, when they sort apples by size, they start to measure them with a tape measure rather than estimating based on how much they weigh.
Kindergartners also practice predicting, which is their ability to guess what will happen during an experiment. For example, they may predict whether an apple will sink or float. This is one of the key scientific skills that kids need to develop in order to move on to more advanced experiments.
Health
At this age, children are inquisitive and always happy to explore the natural world around them. The kindergarten science curriculum fosters this curiosity, encouraging children to observe and investigate the natural world.
Children are encouraged to use their five senses to learn about living things and to record their observations in their science journals through pictures, dictation or kindergarten-style writing. They also learn to recognize and respect the needs of plants and animals.
Daily health checks are essential in assessing a child’s well-being. It is important to follow your program’s policies for when a child should be sent home from day care due to illness, and to help families understand these procedures. In addition, these documents are important for tracking and recording immunizations and identifying children with ongoing health issues that may affect learning.