71 Things your child needs to know before Kindergarden

Personal and Social Development
Approach to learning

• Shows eagerness and curiosity as a learner
• Persists in task and seeks help when encountering a problem
• Is generally pleasant and cooperative

Self-Control

• Follows rules and routines
• Manages transitions (going from one activity to the next)
• Demonstrates normal activity level

Interactions with Others

• Interacts easily with one or more children
• Interacts easily with familiar adults
• Participates in group activities
• Plays well with others
• Takes turns and shares
• Cleans up after play

Conflict Resolution

• Seeks adult help when needed to resolve conflicts
• Uses words to resolve conflicts

Language and Literacy
Listening

• Listens with understanding to directions and conversations
• Follows one-step directions
• Follows two-step directions

Speaking

• Speaks clearly enough to be understood without contextual clues
• Relates experiences with some understanding of sequences of events

Literature and Reading

• Listens with interest to stories read aloud
• Shows interest in reading-related activities
• Retells information from a story
• Sequences three pictures to tell a logical story

Writing

• Uses pictures to communicate ideas
• Uses scribbles, shapes, and letter-like symbols to write words or ideas

Alphabet Knowledge

• Recites/sings alphabet
• Matches upper-case letters
• Matches lower-case letters
• Identifies upper-case letters
• Identifies lower-case letters

Mathematical Thinking
Patterns and Relationships

• Sorts by color, shape, and size
• Orders or seriates several objects on the basis of one attribute
• Recognizes simple patterns and duplicates them

Number concept and operations

• Rote counts to 20
• Counts objects with meaning to 10
• Matches numerals
• Identifies by naming, numerals 0-10

Geometry and spatial relations

• Identifies 4 shapes- circle, square, rectangle, triangle
• Demonstrates concepts of positional/directional concepts (up/down, over/under, in/out, behind/in front of, beside/between, top/bottom, inside/outside, above/below, high/low, right/left, off/on, first/last, far/near, go/stop).

Measurement

• Shows understanding of and uses comparative words (big/little, large/small, short/long, tall/short, slow/fast, few/many, empty/full, less/more.

Physical Development
Gross-Motor Skills

• Pedals and steers a tricycle
• Jumps in place, landing on two feet
• Jumps consecutively- 7 jumps
• Balances on one foot for 5 seconds
• Hops on one foot 2-3 hops
• Hops on one foot- 6 ft.
• Throws a ball with direction- 5 ft.
• Catches a thrown ball with arms and body
• Climbs a playground ladder
• Skips smoothly for 20 feet

Fine-Motor Skills

• Stacks 10, one-inch blocks
• Strings 4 1/2″ beads in two minutes
• Completes a seven piece interlocking puzzle
• Makes a pancake, snake, and ball from playdough
• Grasps pencil correctly
• Copies:  vertical line, horizontal line, circle, cross, square, V, triangle
• Copies first name
• Prints first name without a model
• Grasps scissors correctly
• Cuts within 1/4″ of a 6″ straight line on construction paper
• Cuts out a 3″ square on construction paper
• Cuts out a 3″ triangle on construction paper
• Cuts out a 3″ circle on construction paper
• Uses a glue stick appropriately
• Uses appropriate amount of glue for tasks

The Arts
Creative Arts

• Identifies 10 colors:  red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple, black, white, brown, pink
• Uses a variety of art materials for tactile experience and exploration

Music/Movement

• Participates in group music experiences
• Participates in creative movement/dance

Creative Dramatics

• Makes believe with objects
• Takes on pretend roles and situations

Complete life cycle of a butterfly

About 6 weeks ago, we bought five caterpillars from internet. They came with a jar and  looked tiny. They  moved around in the jar and became bigger and bigger.  After a long cocoon stage (about 12 days), they all turned into beautiful butterflies. We fed them with sugar water and made them a flower bed on the bottom of the container. We wanted to keep those butterflies but their lives only last for 2-3 weeks so we released them this week at our backyard.Our children were very excited to observe the life cycle of real butterflies

Tiny Caterpillars

Bigger Caterpillars

Cocoon Stage

Butterflies

Release butterflies

Released butterflies

Science: The crow and the water jug (乌鸦喝水)

We read the story " the crow and the water jug (乌鸦喝水)" together this week. Our children loves this story and had me read many times. So I decided to do an experiment to visualize this story. In this experiment, each child was given 8-10 little rocks to put into the water jug, they kept adding rocks one by one until the water reached the top of the jug. It was really fun and an good opportunity  for our children to learn to wait and take turns.

Fine Motor Skills: Stringing

Fine motor skills are the coordination of small muscle movements which occur e.g., in the fingers, wrists and hands, usually in coordination with the eyes and are controlled by central nerves. In our program, we incorporate many activities that build toddlers' fine motor skills and help encourage them to develop new ones.

This week we did stringing, a fun activity for children to exercise their  fine motor skills. We provide younger children with bigger string blocks. For older children (>2.5y), we gave them colorful beads to string necklaces and bracelets. Every child brought home a hand made necklace for Mom. 

Stringing blocks for younger children

Stringing Beads for older children (>2.5y)

Necklaces for Mom

Stringing blocks for younger children

Stringing beads for older children

I made myself a bracelet

the theme of Mother's day

This week was very special. We were together to celebrate the Mother's day of this year.

(My Mom is in China right now, I need to remember to give her a call after I finish blogging. There is a quote I love the most about Mom: "Mom is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary." I want to thank my Mom for helping me become an independent woman. She is the excellent role model for me to learn about being  responsible, caring, honest and hard-working. Those are the values I will definitely pass on to my own daughter. I wish my Mom good health and wish one day my daughter will tell me I am a good mother too.)

This was probably the first year for most of children in our group to understand there would be a special day for Mom and we would show our love and appreciation to Mom on that day. We had a group discussion about "Where did you come from?" Some kids said they were from Mom, one said he was from Dad, one said he was from both. Very cute answers.

We had children decorate a picture frame with paint and glitter, then put in one of their best photos we took at our daycare, and finished it with a pink heart saying" I love my Mom 2012", which made it a perfect gift for Mom on the Mother's Day.

Tapping on glitter

Painting the frame

Frames Ready

An unique gift for Mom

Fun Crafts: Pink Pig

Our project of this week is to glue a pink pig on a stock paper. Look the different versions our children created. ( Can you believe they are just 2-3 toddlers)

where are my feet?

Look at my tail

oh? me?

the Theme of Construction

Children like to learn about things around us, such as houses and buildings. They wonder how things being built up and what we call each part of a building, e.g. window, door, roof...They just have so many questions for us...

This week our theme was Construction. First we read the story "the Three Little Pigs". Our children learned there were some materials that are more suitable for buildings, e.g. bricks, rocks... I prepared some building materials for our children to feel and touch, let them discuss which one is stronger and more durable...

I demonstrated a drawing of a simple house and a pink pig to our children and had them name each part of the house while I was drawing.

We also read a simple blueprint together, we worked together to find the doors, windows, attics, etc. on the blueprint.

To understand how buildings being structured, we used spaghetti and marshmallow to make a building together.

We watched a short video on youtube, a musical version of "the Three Little Pigs", very fun and comical.