Kindergarten is a new world for children, moving from home-based learning to the classroom. They’ll learn about school rules and expectations, as well as social skills and academic pursuits.
Teachers around the world use similar practices to teach this grade, but poorer regions often struggle to maintain kindergartens. These kindergartens often don’t have the facilities to accommodate students, or they’re overcrowded.
Language and Literacy
Language and literacy are the ways in which we communicate ideas to each other. Infants and toddlers develop their communication skills through responsive relationships with nurturing adults. Toddlers learn to recognize and name things in their environment through reading books together and talking about them.
In kindergarten, children develop their print concepts and phonological awareness. They also learn high-frequency sight words, which are words that don’t follow a particular spelling pattern or sound but appear frequently in text.
Many kindergarten classrooms take a developmental approach to teaching writing. This means that children focus on conveying their ideas and knowledge on paper, rather than learning the rules for spelling and grammar. In kindergarten, children may start to recognize rhyming words, which is another level of phonological awareness.
Math
A child’s first official year of schooling is a critical milestone in the development of many skills, including math. Learning how to count, recognize numbers, and understand basic shapes sets the stage for more advanced math concepts in elementary school.
Kindergarten students work to develop number sense by understanding that the last number counted tells how many objects were accounted for (one-to-one correspondence). They also learn about number families, such as 2+3=5, and use manipulatives to demonstrate addition and subtraction within 10.
To set up kids for success in math, it is important that they have a comprehensive curriculum. Time4Learning’s kindergarten math curriculum uses bright, colorful and engaging activities that make it easy for children to log in and work on their own pace. It also provides a clear scope and sequence so teachers know exactly what standards they are covering with each practice page or center. Each lesson also includes extensive teacher notes with best-practice teaching strategies, formative assessment options and suggested questions for eliciting student thinking.
Social Studies
Social studies, sometimes perceived as a subject reserved for older students, holds an important place in the kindergarten curriculum. Social studies at this early educational stage nurtures children’s natural interests in the world around them and builds their understanding of how societies function.
Developing Geographical and Historical Awareness
Kindergarten social studies helps children understand their environment through the stories of where they live and the people who lived before them. The curriculum also teaches about the roles they play as members of their community.
Teaching About the Local and National Holidays
Teachers are often a vital link to children’s social studies learning. Kindergarten teachers encourage their students to learn about themselves, their families and the communities where they live through classroom activities that include a daily class meeting to share news. They also teach children to recognize differences in culture, and build skills for collaborative problem-solving. Educators should strive for purposeful, powerful integrative social studies instruction that is values-based, challenging, and active.
Physical Activity
Physical activity is vital for children’s health and well-being now and in the future. They need different types of physical activities to keep their bones and muscles strong. Preschool-aged children (3-5 years old) should be physically active for at least 180 minutes per day. Find ways for the whole family to get active together, like taking your kids on walks, riding bikes or playing active games.
In the present study, using stratified random sampling, 4,600 kindergartens are selected and a questionnaire survey and children’s healthy physical fitness test are conducted. SPSS 21.0 is used to analyze the data and crosstabs, correlation and regression analysis are performed, with a significance level of a=0.05.
Results show that kindergarten environmental factors significantly affect children’s healthy physical fitness. Children with large playgrounds and more sports equipment in their kindergartens, who take more game classes a week and with appropriate levels, have better healthy physical fitness. Family environmental factors also influence healthy physical fitness, with those whose parents are good at sports and have high ability, having better performance.