Kindergarteners delight in the joys of early literacy. Through songs, stories, hands-on centers activities, writing and discussion, students:

Engage with the world of books, poems, and songs with joy and excitement

Demonstrate mastery of all sounds and letters

Begin decoding consonant-vowel-consonant words, “magic e” words and recognize kindergarten sight words

Read pre-primer books with understanding

Respond to open-ended interpretive questions about a read-aloud text Write all capital and lowercase letters and use inventive spelling to write words

Plan, write, and illustrate their own stories

Kindergartners notice patterns everywhere as they engage with the math that is all around them. Using a hands-on, place value-centered curriculum, students:

Identify number names, count, and compare numbers up to 100

Understand addition as putting together and adding to, and understand subtraction as taking apart and taking from

Work with numbers 0-100 to gain foundations for place value

Classify objects and count the number of objects in categories (beginning graphing)

Analyze, compare, create and compose shapes

Identify and continue patterns

Tell time to the hour

Identify coins and dollar bills

As young naturalists, kindergartners learn to slow down and take time to quietly observe the uniqueness of the plants, animals and insects in their environment. Through outdoor experiences, field trips, reading, discussion and art integration, students:

Build scientific information and thinking skills through the exploration of nature

Summarize scientific ideas learned through read-aloud text (example: how caterpillars become butterflies)

Recognize, describe, and accurately draw common animals, insects and plants of the local oak woodland habitat

Spend time outside, seeing, touching, smelling, hearing and feeling connected to the outdoors`

Closely observe nature, noticing and describing plant, animal or insect characteristics, differences and similarities

Kindergarten social studies gives students the chance to expand their awareness of the world around them. Through songs, stories, art and experiential learning, students:

Recognize and describe how individuals and families are both similar and different

Recognize our membership to different groups, such as our classroom, school, local and religious communities

Begin to value the multicultural and multi-ethnic dimensions of our society

Demonstrate an understanding of how and why people celebrate.

Understand the ways in which different cultures can be expressed through holidays and traditions

Participate in a classroom voting process