Pre-School Skills

Approaches to Learning and Cognitive Development

  • Is inquisitive and seeks information to build understanding
  • Expands personal expression
  • Uses trial and error to explore, discover, and problem solve
  • Explores new settings, people, and objects
  • Chooses strategies to control emotional responses with the help of an adult
  • 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
  • Participates in and creates symbolic play and expression

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 other’s 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 and develop a beginning understanding of counting
  • Uses geometric modeling and spatial reasoning
  • Sorts, classifies, and orders objects by color, shape, or size
  • 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
  • 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
  • Recognize letters as special symbols
  • Use books and written materials for enjoyment
  • Begin to draw to communicate language
  • Make scribbles and pictures with meaning