Intermediate Skills
If you are just now tuning in, the previous blog post talked about preparing kids with the “soft,” skills to be ready for kindergarten. This blog post will list more intermediate skills. The next will address the more advanced skills. These are all a general guideline of what I have seen in kindergarten over the last few years.
In addition to everything in the basic skills section, children are able to independently…
Life Skills:
- Persist in solving tasks in more than one way before coming to an adult for help
- Stack papers neatly in a pile
- Automatically throw garbage away and clean up mess
- Attend to one activity for 6-10 minutes
- Play a game with another person by taking turns and sharing automatically
Fine/Gross Motor Skills:
- Draw purposefully with a pencil with added details to an illustration
- Bounce a ball
- Ride a tricycle
- Hop and Skip
- Cut fairly straight or on a zig-zagged line with precision and proper technique (not upside down or facing inward toward the body) – there should not be any shreds or severely jagged lines from quick or imprecise cuts.
- Know how to use a glue stick, put the lid on, twist it back down and put on the lid (no blue or purple lakes with glue only in the middle of the object!)
- Use tongs or serving spoons from a buffet (broccoli, beans, apple sauce, etc.)
- Open a milk boxes, snack bags, string cheese packages, etc.
- Manipulate play dough into different shapes and sizes
Language:
- Attend to a conversation with 3 exchanges and stay on-topic
- Follow 3-step directions (Ex: put your dishes away, clean up the table and brush your teeth).
- Enter play with other kids by using language, such as “Can I play with you?”
Academics:
- Knows basic colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black and white)
- Can create more complex patterns (AABB, ABBA, etc.)
- Can point to each word as they read simple repeating books: (I see a blue boat, I see a red flower, etc. with supporting images).
- Identifies a period and that it means to stop
- Sort the same objects or items more than one way (color, shape and size)
- Count to 100
- Can read a few sight words: the, like, and, play, on, in, a, I
- Identify some 3D shapes, such as cube, cylinder, sphere and cone
- Write first name with capital for the beginning and lower case afterward
- In addition to identifying all upper-case letters, also identify all lower case letters in random order without pictures
- Identify ten or more letter sounds without pictures in random order (from lower case letters) – a sound, not say the picture, apple.
- Add and subtract within 5 using manipulatives or objects for help
Did I miss/misplace something from the intermediate
skills, teachers/parents/grandparents? Let me know in the comment section
below! I don’t want to miss out on a thing as I want to give my parents and
preschool teachers the best information possible about incoming students.