A Note to Self: What your Kindergartner Needs to Know

Book Count: 69

What your Kindergartner Needs to Know: Preparing Your Child for a Lifetime of Learning Edited by: E.D. Hirsch, Jr. and John Holdren
Non-Fiction: education, parenting 278 pages 1996

We read this book to get ideas of what things our oldest could be working on this year to be ready for kindergarten. And we found either she already knows it (or is learning it) or it is something that we would never think to teach at this age. For example: under things she already knows/ is learning is counting, ABC’s, writing their name, how plants grow, basic music and art concepts, and types of weather. Things that I would never think about teaching includes, subtraction, geography (although she can find some places on a map already, it wasn’t from trying to teach geography so much as pointing out where we were going on a trip or where people she knows lives), biographies of famous people, and history. (And I know, I out of all people should be into teaching her history, but in school we didn’t really start that until the 5th grade beyond learning about the First Thanksgiving every year.) The book also had a number of places to get more information or things to use in teaching on a subject, making it an overall useful book.