Pre-Kindergarten Skills
Approaches to Learning and Cognitive Development
- Is inquisitive and seeks information to build understanding using the scientific method and forming hypothesis
- Expands personal expression
- Uses trial and error to explore, discover, and problem solve
- Explores new settings, people, and objects without undo anxiety
- Chooses strategies to control emotional responses
- Uses prior relationships to expand understanding and problem solving
- Seeks assistance for problem solving when necessary
- Tests ideas about how things work
- Explores materials and actions with purpose and a plan
- Participates in and creates symbolic play and expression with detail
Physical Development
- Coordinate whole body movements with strength, agility, and balance
- Use fingers and hands for purposeful tasks
- Coordinate motor activities based on sensory input
- Sustain strength for increased periods of time
- Participates in age-appropriate movement activities daily
- Independent in personal hygiene skills
- Participates in mealtime routines
- Follows safety rules
Social/Emotional Skills
- Seeks assistance from familiar adults
- Engages in associative play
- Engages in cooperative play
- Communicates with peers
- Modifies behavior to solicit actions and responses
- Participates in group activities
- Recognize and responds to others emotions
- Uses novel language, sounds, and physical humor for social purposes
- Adjusts to new settings and people
- Use strategies to get needs met
- Increasingly able to control actions, words, and responses
- Develops a sense of competence
General Knowledge
- Uses number words and concepts
- Recognize some numbers, demonstrate rote counting and one-to-one correspondence
- Uses geometric modeling and spatial reasoning
- Sorts, classifies, and orders objects by color, shape, or size and replicate and predict patterns
- Describes, discusses, and explains observable similarities and differences
- Investigates unfamiliar phenomena
- Demonstrates awareness of group membership
- Follows simple rules and limits
- Uses artistic expression and language to communicate emotions
Language and Literacy
- Understands messages conveyed by artwork, writing, and other forms of expression
- Uses communication with a purpose
- Seeks social interactions
- Uses descriptive vocabulary
- Uses and answers “wh” questions
- Has a receptive vocabulary of several hundred words
- Uses basic conventions of grammar and syntax
- Responds verbally and non-verbally
- Manipulate phonemes to make new words and to rhyme
- Identify how many syllables are in a word
- Identify beginning sounds in words
- Recognize letters as special symbols
- Use books and written materials for enjoyment
- Begin to write and draw to communicate language and messages
- Make pictures with meaning