Kindergarten Kickstarter: Social Studies
3 mins read

Kindergarten Kickstarter: Social Studies

Is your preschooler ready for kindergarten? Let’s practice our skills to understand our world and community.

The Texas Education Agency provides a list of skill domains to help determine if your child is ready for kindergarten. With these programs, we hope to make those standards a little easier to understand and share ways that you can help your child build those skills every day.

This post focuses on social studies skills, a fancy way of talking about the skills we use to understand our world and how communities work together. Our people, past and present skills help us understand how time works and how we organize our lives around it. Our citizenship skills help us understand the important customs, symbols and celebrations that represent our beliefs and national identity.


Early Literacy Connections

Helping your child put images in order helps your child connect their life to specific events, time and routines. Similarly, sharing stories with a beginning, middle and end helps your child learn that stories have a beginning, middle and end. Understanding this structure helps your child know what to expect when reading, and also how to share stories of their own. Sharing symbols like flags helps your child identify important cultural symbols, like the United States flag, and what they mean to the community.

Supplies

Below is what you will need for our two activities:

Life SequencingTear Paper Flags
Lifespan Card, orConstruction paper in red, white and blue
Pictures of family members at different agesCrayons
Glue
Texas or USA flag template

Instructions

Life Sequencing

  1. Choose a set of cards (or stack of images). Talk with your child about the people pictured. What ages do they represent?
  2. Put the cards in order. Lay out the cards from youngest to oldest.
  3. Talk about the differences. What happens in each stage? Do you have any family members that currently match that stage?
  4. Talk about your child. What stages has your child gone through? How have they changed?

Tear Paper Flags

  1. Choose a flag. Talk about what it represents. Is it a state flag or a country flag?
  2. Tear colored paper and glue onto your flag to match the colors. If you need help, you can use pictuers of the flags to help you get the colors right.
  3. Talk about the symbols that represent our state and community. Where do you see them?

Review

Help your child understand how time and routines help structure our lives. Talk about the routines and event sthat make up your day, or try creating a schedule for your day. Give your child plenty of opportunities to talk about yesterday and today. What was the weather like yesterday? What do you think it will be like today?

Share and explore community symbols with your child. Talk about the flags you see. Where do you find them? What colors and shapes do you see on them? You can also practice saying the words of the Pledge of Allegiance. Talk with your child about what the pledge means and when they might hear it recited.


Continue Learning

Sometimes You Fly
by Katherine Applegate

We Are Citizens of the World
by Dewayne Hotchkins

The Flag We Love
by Pam Muñoz Ryan

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