Goals for Children

In Kindergarten

GOALS FOR CHILDREN IN KINDERGARTEN:

  • Children will grow in their self-esteem, cultural identity, curiosity, independence, and individual strengths.
  • Children will continue to develop a love of learning.
  • Children will gain increasing control of their large and small muscles.
  • Children will engage in interesting, appropriate experiences that integrate their social, emotional, intellectual, and physical development.
  • Children will use written and spoken language in concrete, meaningful ways.
  • Children will use mathematical concepts and mathematical symbols in concrete, meaningful ways.
  • Children will continue to develop control of their own behavior through positive adult guidance.
  • Children will become increasingly self-motivated, cooperative, and able to resolve problems among themselves with minimal adult direction.

When formulating a developmentally appropriate curriculum, the characteristics of the five year old child must be taken into consideration. The following is a developmental profile of a five year old child that gives a reference on the RANGE of abilities expected.

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL

  • Chooses friends
  • Prefers friends own age and same sex
  • Uses props for role-playing
  • Enjoys pretending in play
  • Directs other children in play
  • Understands rules of simple, competitive games
  • Plays cooperatively with peers without adult supervision
  • Expresses emotions in acceptable ways
  • Shows awareness of concern for others' feelings
  • Uses appropriate social responses

SELF-HELP

  • Knows street adress, city and phone number
  • Laces and ties shoes
  • Zips
  • Selects own clothing
  • Bathes and brushes teeth independently
  • Answers telephone appropriately and delivers messages

COGNITIVE

  • Discriminates and names leters
  • Identifies own name in print
  • Understands:  more, less, and same
  • Can name the correct number of objects in a set from one to ten
  • Copies shapes, writes letters (with some errors)
  • Matches and identifies shapes
  • Sorts by more that one characteristic (size, color, or shape) at a time
  • Identifies left and right
  • Uses time concepts:  yesterday and tommorow
  • Understands:  first, middle, last
  • Relates clock time to daily schedule
  • Attention span has increased so that distrations can be ignored
  • Understands opposites
  • Knows spatial relations (far, near, on top, below, etc.)
  • Compares objects using "er" and "est" endings
  • Recognizes and continues simples patterns
  • Draws a person with head and eight features
  • Understands one to one correspondence
  • Counts ten objects
  • Knows and names colors

MOTOR SKILLS

Gross Motor

  • Jumps rope
  • Hops on one foot
  • Runs with arms swinging in opposition to feet
  • Catches a ball
  • Skips
  • Gallops
  • Walks backward
  • Aware of right and left sides

Fine Motor

  • Holds pencil correctly
  • Traces letters
  • Copies or writes own name
  • Holds scissors correctly
  • Cuts out simple shapes
  • Uses eating utensils correctly
  • Pastes and glues

COMMUNICATION/LANGUAGE

  • Retells story from a picture book
  • Speaks in a sentence of five to seven words
  • Repeats longer sentences with accuracy
  • Takes turns talking in a conversation
  • Asks for definitions of words
  • Communicates well with family and friends
  • Can tell a make-believe story in own words

SPEECH MILESTONES

  • Has a vocabulary of over 2,000 words
  • Has 100% intelligible speech, although speech is not error-free
  • Uses pronouns
  • Can consistently produce m, n, ng, p, b, f, h, w, k, g, t, d, y, th, v, wh; as well as most vowel sounds
  • Uses the following grammar forms:
    • -ing endings
    • plurals
    • possessives
    • articles (a, the)

The educational goal of the Byram Kindergarten program is to ensure the development of the whole child - physically, emotionally, socially and cognitively - and to provide the experiences necessary for each child to reach his/her maximum potential in these arease of personal growth. Our curriculum has been designed to stimulate the child's interest and to encourage him/her to be an active participant in the learning process with as many hands-on activities as possible. We strongly believe that the child, family, teacher and principal should be actively involved in the learning process in order for the child to meet with success. We encourage and welcome parent participation in classroom activities.

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