Every Skill Your Kindergartner Needs to Know by the End of the Year, Direct from Teachers

Kristen Ruth, a first grade teacher in Missouri, says that she wants her students to show up to the first day of school knowing all of their letters. A graduating kindergartner should be able to identify all of the letters in both lowercase and capitals, and know most of the letter sounds.

Ruth also wants her incoming first graders to have developed phonemic awareness. This refers to knowing that words are made up of sounds. Sounds are not the same thing as letters, for example, the phoneme /sh/ is made up two letters but makes one, specific sound (the sh in shirt or shoe). She said that reading and talking to kids regularly helps support this development.

Being able to clearly write their own full name is an important kindergarten milestone. It turns out that handwriting is about more than just repeated practice. Allison La Prelle, a Santa Paula Unified School District kindergarten teacher, told POPSUGAR that fine motor skills come before writing, and she suggested playing with play dough and doing pincer grasp activities like picking up and counting dry beans or cereal to support this development.

Ruth said that by the end of kindergarten, a child should be able to orally tell a story from beginning to end. La Prelle told us that this ability is best supported when parents read aloud to their children for at least 20 minutes per day, and pause to ask questions or point things out in the story.

After listening to a simple story, Ruth said that a kindergartner should be able to retell and sequence the events and make predictions about what might happen. La Prelle wants her kindergartners to be able to answer the "W" questions after hearing a short text: who, what, when, where, and why. Both teachers emphasised reading aloud and talking about the story as an important way to help children develop this ability.

Counting is part memorizing a sequence, part understanding a concept. Kindergartners need to grasp the idea that we count a set one by one, and that the last number counted is the total number of objects. This skill, called one-to-one correspondence, can be practiced through counting everyday objects. Parents and caregivers can count together with children and then follow up by asking them how many objects there are in all.

By the end of kindergarten, children should be able to compare and order numbers 1 through 10. La Prelle said that to help with this skill, adults should spend time counting, sorting, and comparing real-life objects like toys or kitchen tools.

Kids need to be able to add and subtract within the number five by the time they enter first grade. This skill is best practiced with concrete counting objects, and memorization should ideally happen naturally through repeated practice. According to La Prelle, the best thing to do is find real-life ways to practice maths, whether it happens organically or adults plan it out.

Kindergartners should be able to recognise commonly-used coins like pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, said Ruth. They should also know how many cents each of these coins is worth and understand equivalencies, such as five pennies being equal to one nickel.

Although a kindergartner doesn't necessarily need to be able to reach an analog clock, according to Ruth, they should have an understanding of time and it's passing. For example, they might know that playtime happens at 10 o'clock in the morning, and that it is after story time, or that 3 o'clock comes after 2 o'clock.

Teachers are there to help kids, but kids also need to learn to solve their own problems. "I'd like them to first try and solve the problem with their peer and if they can't, come to an adult to talk to," La Prelle said. She suggested that parents model how to resolve conflict and talk to kids about their own feelings. She also noted that "5-year-olds sometimes need to be told how they're feeling," and gave this example of what an adult might say to guide a child: "I see your face is upset so I think you are feeling mad and you wanted attention so you hit your friend. How can you get their attention instead of hitting?'"