What your child learns in Kindergarten

Religion

Your child will learn to:

• Recognize God as a loving creator
• Identify God's gift to the world of His Son
• Follow Christ's example of respect and love
• Identify the Bible as God's special book
• Retell the biblical stories of Creation, Noah's Ark, and Christ's birth
• See our families as a celebration of God
• Identify the Holy Family
• Demonstrate Christian attitudes during prayer and Mass
• Recite the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, the Sign of the Cross, and Guardian Angel prayers
• Distinguish between the liturgical seasons of Lent, Easter, Advent, and Christmas time
• Identify saints as holy people who help us live as Jesus did
• Recognize a need for prayer in daily life

Math

Your child will learn to:

• Count to 100 and backwards from 10
• Recognize and print numerals to 20
• Use one-to-one correspondence to 15
• Count by 2's, 5's, and 10's
• Explore addition and subtraction
• Use comparative words
• Order and relative time (first, before, after)
• Identify and associate the value of coins
• Recognize basic shapes
• Build and discuss graphs
• Sort and classify by attribute
• Identify, extend, and create patterns
• Identify time to the hour
• Understand elements of the calendar

Reading

Your child will learn to:

• Appreciate the value of literature
• Identify the literary elements of a story
• Retell stories in proper sequence
• Understand print contains meaning
• Interpret and use pictures and labels
• Identify and use letter sounds
• Recognize and use rhyming words
• Identify his or her own name in print
• Identify print conventions (capitals, periods)
• Memorize text and basic sight words
• Understand directionality, tracking left to right
• Distinguish letters, words, and sentences
• Match initial and final consonant sounds with letter names
• Read basic three-letter words (consonant-vowel-consonant)
• Understand word opposites
• Segment sounds in words

Writing

Your child will learn to:

• Demonstrate directionality
• Legibly write the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet
• Print his or her own first and last name
• Understand that letters in written language represent sounds in words
• Describe and label drawings
• Copy environmental print
• Share drawings with the class
• Respond with relevant comments, compliments, and questions
• Identify areas to improve and recognize those changes in drawings and writing
• Demonstrate basic writing conventions of spacing, punctuation, and capitalization
• Hold and use a pencil correctly
• Write basic three-letter words
• Write short sentences using sight words and inventive spelling
• Write numerals 1 to 20 in sequence

Social Studies

Your child will learn to:

• Understand holidays as a time to remember special people and events in our nation's history
• Distinguish between needs and wants
• Recognize a need for rules and authority
• Demonstrate respect for rights, responsibilities, and property
• Describe school and community helpers
• Identify the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance
• Measure time by day and night, months, and seasons
• Associate value with money as a means of buying goods and services
• Acknowledge differences in interest, appearance, and ability as a gift of God
• Recite their address and telephone number

Computer Technology

Your child will learn to:

• Use basic educational programs
• View the computer as a learning tool

Science

Your child will learn to:

• Recognize the five senses
• Identify weather changes associated with the four seasons
• Classify things as living and nonliving
• Explain how plants and animals grow and change over time, including the life cycle of a butterfly (LASER Science program)
• Observe and describe the physical properties of objects
• Practice independent self-care through dental and nutrition units
• Practice basic safety precautions
• Explore comparing and measuring through inquiry-based science

Physical Education

Students receive 30 minutes of P.E. twice a week, focused on gross and fine motor skills, learning new games, participation, and respect for others.

Music

Students have music twice a week for 30 minutes, exploring folk, sacred, and secular pieces through rhythm (beat, no beat, long, short, fast, slow), melody (vocal exploration, high, low), form (musical patterns), and texture and expression (solo versus group, soft versus loud, four voices). They also experiment with unpitched percussion.