First Lessons on Becoming Adults

Technically, kindergarten is that school year in which children around the age of 5 learn reading, writing, and math among others. Sitting still, they also blossom and grow into more independent individuals. 

Rooted from the German origin of the word (‘children’ and ‘garden’), Kindergarten Karana is often considered a milestone year in a child’s educational journey — the time for children around the age of 5 to blossom and grow into more independent individuals. 

Considerations 

From an educational perspective, kindergarten should be “the most joyful school year” aside from the fact this is the time for them to learn.

The lessons is learning how to be in a group, to wait their turn, to listen to the thoughts and ideas of others and to be able to learn that others have thoughts and experiences that are different from their own.

Kindergarten is the time to build upon the foundations of reading, writing, numeracy and, most importantly, to learn how to be part of a community of learners, explore new subjects and gain confidence in themselves as people.

Some perspectives

While specific standards and curricula are different in many places, the general idea that children are still learning to become members of a classroom and a school community is the same. 

This considered the time for kids to learn how to interact, play and socialize with same-age peers. Some of these students have not had a ‘school type’ setting so the beginning of the year is all about getting to know everyone, how the classroom works and its routines.

Age

Children enter kindergarten around the age of 5 years old. Some children, however, begin the school year while they are still 4 and some will be turning 6 shortly after the school year begins as cutoff dates vary from place to place. 

Also, the entrance kindergarten age isn’t the only piece of the puzzle that varies. Some states require kindergarten attendance although local education agencies may have their own entrance and attendance requirements within each place.

While some schools and school districts are lenient, others are more open to academic redshirting, especially for children who turn 5 close to the kindergarten cutoff date. 

However, experts say that there are pros and cons to this option, and it is very child-dependent. Parents should know their children best, including whether they are developmentally ready for kindergarten and all.

Consulting with the child’s preschool or pre-K teachers, day care providers or even a pediatrician can help parents navigate this decision. It is also important to research and understand specific school policies.

School time frame

The start and end of kindergarten classes varies from school to school. While some schools and districts offer full-day programs that mirror a more typical school day (think, a school starts anywhere from 8 to 9 am and lasts for about six to seven hours), others offer a half-day program with either morning or afternoon options, or both. 

During the year students are learning to read, write sentences, add, subtract and play or socialize appropriately with others. Kindergarten is no longer just painting, eating a snack and taking a nap.

However, everything in kindergarten, from following a new schedule to reading a simple book, is a learning experience rich with opportunities for children to grow.

Social and emotional skills

The demands of kindergarten So much of what kindergarten requires social and emotional skills that children — even if they’ve attended pre-K — develop and strengthen over the course of the year. 

The first set of learning is being part in a group. Kids are establishing friendships, working together and collaborating in order to learn. Sitting in a group and listening to one another, the children are also learning from their peers’ feelings, ideas and experiences.  

Another set of lesson include taking turns and sharing. The concept of sharingareapplied to everything from a set of blocks to — especially in larger classes — the teacher’s one-on-one attention. The children are taught about patience and how to take turns.

The next one is all about gaining self-awareness and independence. This includes everything from dealing with separation in a new environment to taking responsibility for many of their personal needs. Overall, this is one way of teaching a kind of autonomy.

This also teaches the children self-awareness as part of a class — discovering when to be a leader and when to ask others for help.

Academic skills

A well-rounded kindergarten curriculum will provide students opportunities to question, experiment, discover and document in their lessons. However, there is definitely explicit instruction in kindergarten, where learning can and should still be play-based and fun. 

During the year the children are really learning everything from how the world works around them (some basic science) to foundations of literacy and math.

Literacy/math

The emphasis in the literacy program is that reading and writing shouldbe the key in kindergarten. Not only will children “learn to identify and write uppercase and lowercase letters and match those letters to their unique sounds,” but they will apply these skills as they assign meaning to the words., 

The will be able to communicate all around them through writing, speaking and reading simple books.

In math, the lessons include counting, understanding numbers and shapes, comparing the size of objects and groups and basic addition and subtraction. These are often taught with tangible materials and often taught ways that help make math relevant to the kids. 

As always, a well-rounded kindergarten curriculum will provide students opportunities to question, experiment, discover and document.

Difference:  kindergarten and pre-K

In a pre-K (pre-kindergarten), the classroom prepares kids around age 4 (again, some may still be about to turn 4; others may be almost 5) for kindergarten. However, in some schools, pre-K may look a lot like kindergarten does in others. 

Before, a lot of the emphasis in kindergarten was preparing kids for working with each other, for routines of the school day, leaving home. Today, kindergarten now is much more, for better or worse, focused on preparation for first grade.

More expectations are now placed upon kindergarten students, whose age generally makes them more developmentally mature. Children entering kindergarten are fairly independent attending to personal needs, (going to bathrooms, putting on a coat). In kindergarten, the student-to-teacher ratio is often larger in a kindergarten classroom.