Kindergarten Milestones: Easy Ways to Track Progress Through Play
My son is starting Kindergarten this year. We are homeschooling and using a program called Braintree. We are required to submit learning goals and reports throughout the year in order to qualify for the funding we receive to homeschool. This week we have been trying to pinpoint where my son is at in regards to the learning standards for Kindergarten in Indiana. While I don’t necessarily believe in Kindergarten readiness, I do think it is great to have documentation of where you are at the beginning of the year. Looking back, it will be nice to have a sheet that shows the progress made and the areas that could still use a little bit of work. So I put together these benchmark activities that can be done at the beginning, middle, and end of the year. First, let’s cover the Language Arts Benchmark Standards.
This is a simplified rubric of what Kindergarten standards are meant to be learned by the end of the year. I have created activities to go with each of these 6 standards that can be done multiple times throughout the year to see what is falling through the cracks. Beginning with number 1…
- Book Recommendations
Most of the classic fairy tale stories are great for this! It is easy to pick out the characters, the setting, and the events. Here are a couple that are more entertaining for this age group:
Pop-up Fairytales: The Three Little Pigs
Pop-up Fairytales: Little Red Riding Hood
Pop-up Fairytales: Goldilocks and the Three Bears
These are also great (I would recommend these 4 to anyone, regardless of age):
And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon
What Should Danny do? School Day
What Should Danny do? On Vacation
The goal here is to read with your child and see if they can sort out the Title, the author, and the illustrator and understand the difference between the two roles. After reading the stories, see if your child can tell you the name of the characters and where to story took place. Have them recall a few of the events that happened in the book. If they are struggling, flip through the book to certain pages to see if the pictures help them remember. You can print the benchmark sheet above to write their answers/ability to respond for future reference. If you choose to do this, it may be helpful to document which books you read so you can use the same ones again if you want.
2. Letter Matching
This printable can be used for multiple activities and thus I would recommend…LAMINATING IT!!! I’ve said it once and I will say it again, I love my laminator. For this activity, cut the cards out. If you don’t want to laminate but still want to reuse them, I would recommend printing on cardstock. If you don’t care if they look perfect, you could also have your child cut them out. The borders are large enough that there is a decent amount of room for error.
The goal here is to have your child match as many of the uppercase letters to the lowercase as you can. Emphasize that they don’t need to know it all right now and the only reason you are doing it is to see what we are going to work on this year. My son only got about 10 matches. But now I know which letters he knows and which he doesn’t! Since I am reusing my cards, I just wrote down which letters he did successfully on the benchmark sheet I had printed. I plan to keep all of his completed work in an expandable pocket folder, and I have a separate one to store all of my printables that I plan to reuse.
3. Rhyming Word Matching
Here is another free printable you can use to gauge your child’s learning. The pictures can help if your child can’t read, but the words are also printed on the puzzle pieces so they can see how rhyming words often end with the same letters. We chose to do this by spreading the puzzle pieces out on the floor and I held up one puzzle piece and said the word. For example, I would hold up Cat and say “Cat-Frog. Does that rhyme? Cat-Sun, Does that rhyme? Cat-Hat, does that rhyme?” Once again, I tallied how many matches he had and recorded them on the printed benchmark sheet.
4. Syllable Counting
For this activity, I don’t have a printable, but I would suggest writing numbers 1-3 on 3 different papers. Lay them out in order on the floor. Use the following list and say a word to your child. Have them jump to the number of syllables in the words. Ex: Ba-na-na (child should jump to number 3).
1-Syllable Words (One Jump)
- cat
- dog
- fish
- sun
2-Syllable Words (Two Jumps)
- apple
- baby
- bunny
- pizza
3-Syllable Words (3 Jumps)
- banana
- elephant
- tomato
- butterfly
5. Alphabet recognition and sounds
Using the alphabet cards above, you can see where your child is at with letter recognition. Use them as flash cards. Hold one up and ask what letter it is. Let them know they can just say “I don’t know” and it is okay. They are not expected to know them all. You can just do uppercase or lowercase, or mix them together if you have already done the alphabet matching game and you think your child will understand that there are two sets of letters in the mix.
You can repeat the flashcard activity but have them make the sound that the letter makes. If you are looking for more practice that is hands off for you, the Leap Frog’s Letter Factory video is great. You can find it on Prime, Tubi, or YouTube.
6. Tracing sheet
Simple. Straightforward. I don’t have a lot to say about this. It would be good to have your child practice writing their name on all of the sheets they do. It’s cute to see how their name writing gets better throughout the year.
7. Opposites
Finally, a simple opposites matching worksheet. There are some tricky ones on here I discovered after giving it to my child to do. If this seems too simple for them, you can try to do this verbally with your child. It could be a fun game you can play in the car together. You just say one word and they have to tell you the opposite. Ex: you say hot, they say cold. They say itchy, you say soft. Let them come up with the words too sometimes! They will love that.
Keep all of the activities they completed along with the benchmark sheet in a folder for them to reference midway through the year and at the end. Make sure you put a date on these!
