During pre-kindergarten, children will develop an appreciation for what numbers are and what they are used for. Children will work to count accurately and learn to count to a specific number. A very basic introduction to addition and subtraction will begin in pre-kindergarten. You can help your child prepare by providing opportunities to count throughout the day. You can count how many books you will read, or count steps up as you walk up a flight of stairs and count backwards as you come back down. You can practice taking an object away from a group of objects and adding it back again.
Basic shape identification will be reinforced in pre-kindergarten. Directional words such as above, behind and over will be explored. Children may be asked to place a square above a circle or to place a square behind a rectangle. The concepts of left and right will also be introduced. You can help your child prepare by finding shapes throughout the day, like discussing how a sandwich has a square shape, but cut in half, produces two triangles.
Pre-kindergarten students will explore objects and discover the meaning of weight, height and length. Scales may be used to learn about weight in pounds. Interactive exercises will introduce simple measurement, using rulers or other measurement tools. An introduction to telling time will help children learn to distinguish between hours, minutes and seconds as well as night, morning and afternoon. Prepare your child for pre-kindergarten by encouraging him to help with baking or cooking or to help you measure laundry detergent.
Children will learn about patterns during pre-kindergarten. Sequencing activities will help children learn to place a series of events in order, such as the steps to get ready for bed. Children will experiment with creating patterns of their own. Music will be incorporated to teach about sound patterns. You can encourage your child to create a pattern using a few kinds of colorful fruit or to organize cabinets by color, size, or shape. Buttons, beads or other small manipulative objects can be used to practice sorting by color or shape.
Pre-kindergarten students will learn to organize and interpret information. Pie graphs, charts and other visual aids will help students make connections between data. Children will organize data into useful information and use that information to make predictions. For example, a table could be created to show temperature changes throughout a month and students could predict the probability of the weather getting more hot or cold. Showing your child growth charts that detail his growth over the years can help him understand the importance of tracking data.