School Days: Planning

It's summer so I'm going to try to get ahead of the game this year and do school planning now. Sean will be 4 in November. The birthday cut off here is September 30 so technically he won't be a kindergartener until September 2013. However, we're looking at pre-k 4 this year. It just doesn't make sense to hold him back if he doesn't need to. I started my planning by looking up what a child needs to know before starting kindergarten.

Here is a portion of a list I found:

• Hold conversations, listen, ask and answer questions
• Use imagination to create own stories
• Use complete sentences
• Follow simple one step directions
• Name some familiar letters
• Count to 10 or higher
• Count five objects by touching each one in turn
• Recognize some numbers
• Name the colors in a box of eight crayons
• Name the basic shapes: circle, triangle, square and rectangle
• Match and sort by size, shape and color

I did quite a bit of googling and didn't find much different. Either Sean is advanced or there's a low expectation of kids because according to what I found, Sean is almost ready to start kindergarten! I'm throwing out going by his "grade" and going with just building on what he does know.

Some of what he does know:

• A lot of the alphabet including some phonics. He'll pick up a "P" and say "P.. puh puh puh.. popcorn!"
• For the most part, the numbers 0-9.. He will confuse 2 with 5 and 6 with 9 at times.
• Colors
• Basic shapes and some not so basic shapes such as an octagon

And he has a love for learning. He's always asking questions wanting to know how and why. He loves being read to. He loves figuring things out.

This isn't a complete list but some of what we'll be working on this coming year:

• Recognizing all the letters.
• Phonics and beginning to read
• Writing
• Recognizing more numbers
• Addition and subtractions
• Telling time
• Understanding money
• Address
• Phone number