Preschool and Kindergarten Goals

Before you read these, please keep in mind that these are just loose goals.  They give me a trajectory and organization.  I can plan activities better when I know what skills I want them to help him practice.  There is no pressure on Xander (or me) to accomplish these within a given time frame.  I strive to keep him stimulated and challenged, while at the same time make sure learning is fun!    

A lot of this list comes from the Iowa educational standards, although I added some things and took away others.  I also used the lists of goals that accompany his Right Start Math and All About Spelling programs.  I tried to find academic goals that were a natural progression from his current abilities.  For better or worse, most of those came from the kindergarten level (which is why I labeled it both preschool and kindergarten goals).  I'm not sure what that will mean when he is school age and has to go to school , but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.  For now, I'll just work on keeping him stimulated and LOVING learning.

Literacy Goals

• Alphabetizing
• From beginning to end
• What letter comes next from a random point in the alphabet
• With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
• With prompting and support, identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.
• With prompting and support, describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text.
• Understand beginning, middle, & ending sounds in words
• Sequence events from a story
• Be able to write all of the letters
• Identify basic punctuation(period, exclamation, question mark, comma, quotes)
• Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.
• Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.
• Recognize and produce rhyming words.
• Identify number of syllables
• Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.
• Understand and use question words (interrogatives) (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how).
• Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I.

Math Goals

• Numeration
• Can count out 31 objects and arrange in groups of tens
• Can recognize quantities 1-100 and represent them on abacus
• Can represent quantities 1-100 with numbers (if not physically)
• Counting to 100
• By ones
• By fives
• By tens
• Count to 20 by 2s
• Knows ordinal numbers to 1st-10th
• Knows even numbers to 20
• Knows odd numbers to 19
• Money
• Can identify penny, nickel, dime, quarter, dollar
• Place value
• knows 10 ones is 1 ten
• knows 10 tens is 1 hundred
• knows, for example, 45 as 4-ten 5
• Addition
• Understands addition as combining parts to form a whole or putting together
• Knows number combinations equal to 10
• knows number combinations up to 10
• Subtraction
• Understands subtraction as missing addend
• Understands subtraction as separating or taking apart
• Problem Solving
• Can solve addition problems
• Can solve missing addend problems
• Geometry
• Knows mathematical names of triangle, rectangle, and circle
• Recognizes 3D shapes
• Knows parallel and perpendicular lines
• Can continue a pattern
• Mentally rotate a 2D shape (tangrams)
• Time
• Knows days of the week
• Knows months of the year
• Can tell time to the hour
• Identify math symbols +, -, =, <, >
• Compare numbers (greater than, less than, equal to)
• Compare attributes
• Which holds more, takes up more space, is longer, is wider, etc
• Sort by categories

Science Goals

• Asking questions and defining problems
• Making observations
• Making and testing predictions
• Understanding cause and effect
• Identifying and continuing patterns
• Scale, Proportion and Quantity
• use relative scales (e.g., bigger and smaller; hotter and colder; faster and slower) to describe objects

Practical Life

• Tying shoes
• Sweeping
• Cleaning table
• Hanging towels/wash cloths
• Dressing and undressing by himself