Kindergarten is a child’s first introduction to formal education and should serve as a supported transition between home, early learning and care, or preschool environments. With the implementation of school readiness plans and assessments, the department will be identifying and creating resources to promote robust and developmentally appropriate kindergarten programs.

 

The following are the Colorado academic standards for kindergarteners. 
 

Comprehensive Health

• Apply knowledge and skills to engage in lifelong healthy eating
• Apply knowledge and skills related to health promotion, disease prevention, and health maintenance
• Utilize knowledge and skills to enhance mental, emotional, and social well-being
• Apply knowledge and skills that promote healthy, violence-free relationships
• Apply personal safety knowledge and skills to prevent and treat intentional or unintentional injury

Dance

• Understand that dance performance requires technical competency
• Improvise and create movement based on an intent or meaning
• Understand and appreciate a dance in terms of the culture in which it is performed
• Demonstrate thinking skills such as describing, analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, and problem-solving through dance movement and verbal discussion

Drama and Theatre Arts

• Employ drama and theatre skills, and articulate the aesthetics of a variety of characters and roles
• Express drama and theatre arts skills in a variety of performances, including plays, monologues, improvisation, purposeful movement, scenes, design, technical craftsmanship, media, ensemble works, and public speaking
• Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of theatre history, dramatic structure, dramatic literature, elements of style, genre, artistic theory, script analysis, and roles of theatre practitioners through research and application

Mathematics

• Understand the structure and properties of our number system. At their most basic level numbers are abstract symbols that represent real-world quantities
• Apply transformation to numbers, shapes, functional representations, and data
• Make claims about relationships among numbers, shapes, symbols, and data and defend those claims by relying on the properties that are the structure of mathematics
• Understand quantity through estimation, precision, order of magnitude, and comparison. The reasonableness of answers relies on the ability to judge appropriateness, compare, estimate, and analyze error

Music

• Employ musical skills through a variety of means, including singing, playing instruments, and purposeful movement
• Perform music with appropriate technique and level of expression at an appropriate level of difficulty in sight reading and prepared performance
• Demonstrate the processes of development of musical literature from rehearsal to performance, exhibiting appropriate interpersonal and expressive skills, both individually and within ensembles
• Demonstrate the expressive elements of music - including melody, harmony, rhythm, style, genre, texture, voicing/instrumentation, mood, tonality, and form - through voice, musical instruments, and/or the use of electronic tools
• Display instrumental or vocal improvisation skills by performing extemporaneously what is created in the mind
• Create music by composing and/or arranging what is heard or envisioned, in notated or non-notated form, with or without the use of music technology, demonstrating originality and technical understanding
• Read and employ the language and vocabulary of music in discussing musical examples and writing music, including technology related to melody, harmony, rhythm, style, genre, voicing/orchestration, mood, tonality, expression, and form
• Demonstrate melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic aural skills through identification, transcription, and vocalization or instrumental playback of aural musical examples
• Make informed, critical evaluations of the effectiveness of musical works and performances on the basis of aesthetic qualities, technical excellence, musicality, or convincing expression of feelings and ideas related to cultural and ideological associations
• Develop a framework for making informed personal musical choices, and utilize that framework in the making and defending of musical choices
• Demonstrate a nuanced understanding of aesthetics in music, appropriate to the particular features of given styles and genres, as it relates to the human experience in music
• Know the place of each of the participants in the performance environment and practice appropriate audience participation; recognize the place and importance of music in life

Physical Education

• Demonstrate competency in motor skills and movement patterns needed to perform a variety of physical activities
• Demonstrate understanding of movement concepts, principles, strategies, and tactics as they apply to learning and performing physical activities
• Achieve and maintain a health-enhancing level of physical fitness
• Exhibit responsible personal and social behavior that respects self and others in physical activity settings

Reading, Writing and Communicating

• Use language appropriate for purpose and audience
• Demonstrate skill in inferential and evaluative listening
• Interpret how the structure of written English contributes to the pronunciation and meaning of complex vocabulary
• Demonstrate comprehension of a variety of informational, literary, and persuasive texts
• Write with a clear focus, coherent organization, sufficient elaboration, and detail
• Apply standard English conventions to effectively communicate with written language
• Gather information from a variety of sources; analyze and evaluate the quality and relevance of the source; and use it to answer complex questions
• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Science

• Observe, explain, and predict natural phenomena governed by Newton's laws of motion, acknowledging the limitations of their application to very small or very fast objects
• Apply an understanding of atomic and molecular structure to explain the properties of matter, and predict outcomes of chemical and nuclear reactions
• Analyze the relationship between structure and function in living systems at a variety of organizational levels, and recognize living systems' dependence on natural selection
• Apply an understanding that energy exists in various forms, and its transformation and conservation occur in processes that are predictable and measurable
• Describe and interpret how Earth's geologic history and place in space are relevant to our understanding of the processes that have shaped our planet

Social Studies

• Develop an understanding of how people view, construct, and interpret history
• Analyze key historical periods and patterns of change over time within and across nations and cultures
• Examine places and regions and the connections among them
• Understand the allocation of scarce resources in societies through analysis of individual choice, market interaction, and public policy
• Acquire the knowledge and economic reasoning skills to make sound financial decisions (PFL)
• Analyze origins, structure, and functions of governments and their impacts on societies and citizens

Visual Arts

• Analyze, interpret, and make meaning of art and design critically using oral and written discourse
• Recognize, articulate, and debate that the visual arts are a means for expression
• Analyze, interpret, and make meaning of art and design critically using oral and written discourse
• Recognize, articulate, and implement critical thinking in the visual arts by synthesizing, evaluating, and analyzing visual information
• Recognize, demonstrate, and debate the place of art and design in history and culture
• Develop and build appropriate mastery in art-making skills using traditional and new technologies and an understanding of the characteristics and expressive features of art and design
• Recognize, interpret, and validate that the creative process builds on the development of ideas through a process of inquiry, discovery, and research
• Transfer the value of visual arts to lifelong learning and the human experience
• Explain, compare and justify that the visual arts are connected to other disciplines, the other art forms, social activities, mass media, and careers in art and non-art related arenas