Beginning Kindergarten Skills
Ready, Set, Go
Following are 105 desirable readiness skills that will help children get off to a good start when they begin school:
Size
- Understands big and little
- Understands long and short
- Matches shapes or objects based on size
- Recognizes and names primary colors
- Recognizes circles
- Recognizes rectangles
- Copies shapes
Numbers
- Counts orally through 10
- Counts objects in one-to-one correspondence
- Understands empty and full
- Understands more and less
Reading Readiness
- Remembers objects from a given picture
- Knows what a letter is
- Has been read to frequently
- Looks at books or magazines
- Recognizes some nursery rhymes
- Identifies parts of the body
- Identifies objects that have a functional use
- Knows common farm and zoo animals
- Pronounces own first name
- Expresses self verbally
- Identifies other children by name
- Tells the meaning of simple words
- Repeats a sentence of 6-8 words
- Completes incomplete sentence with proper word
- Has own books
- Understands that print carries a message
- Pretends to read
- Uses left-to-right progression
- Answers questions about a short story
- Tells the meaning of words heard in story
- Looks at pictures and tells a story
- Identifies own first name in manuscript
- Prints own first name
Position and Direction
- Understands up and down
- Understands in and out
- Understands front and back
- Understand over (on) and under
- Understands top, bottom, middle
- Understands beside and next to
- Understands hot and cold
- Understands fast and slow
Time
- Understands day and night
- Knows age and birthday
Listening and Sequencing
- Follows simple directions
- Listens to a short story
- Listens carefully
- Recognizes common sounds
- Repeats a sequence of sounds
- Repeats a sequence of orally-given numbers
- Retells simple stories in sequence
Motor Skills
- Is able to run
- Is able to walk a straight line
- Is able to jump
- Is able to hop
- Is able to alternate feet walking down stairs
- Is able to march
- Is able to stand on one foot 5-10 seconds
- Is able to walk backwards for five feet
- Is able to throw a ball
- Pastes objects
- Claps hands
- Matches simple objects
- Touches fingers
- Able to button
- Builds with blocks
- Completes simple puzzles (5 pieces or less)
- Draws and colors beyond a simple scribble
- Able to zip
- Controls pencil and crayon well
- Cuts simple shapes
- Handles scissors well
- Able to copy simple shapes
Social-Emotional Development
- Can be away from parents for 2-3 hours without being upset
- Takes care of toilet needs independently
- Feels good about self
- Is not afraid to go to school
- Cares for own belongings
- Knows full name
- Dresses self
- Knows how to use a handkerchief or tissue
- Knows own sex
- Brushes teeth
- Crosses a residential street safely
- Asks to go to school
- Knows parents’ names
- Knows home address
- Knows home phone number
- Enters into dinner table conversation
- Carries a plate of food
- Maintains self-control
- Gets along well with other children
- Plays with other children
- Recognizes authority
- Shares with others
- Talks easily
- Likes teachers
- Meets visitors without shyness
- Puts away toys
- Able to stay on a task
- Able to work independently
- Helps family with chores