SKILLS & UNDERSTANDING: BY AGE 6

students exploring the world with Montessori geography materials

EXAMPLES OF WHAT OUR TYPICAL 6-YEAR-OLD CAN DO AFTER 3 YEARS AT PVMA
(I.E., AT THE END OF KINDERGARTEN)

Social, motor & practical life skills 
  • Has acquired strong social skills – can interact gracefully with other children and adults; uses language to communicate her needs and feeling; is able to form friendships with her peers
  • Can pour liquids from heavy containers, prepare basic foods (e.g., peeling carrots, cutting fruit), set & clean up a table without help
  • Has mastered the 3-finger pencil grip
  • Can use scissors to cut lines and curved shapes
Cognitive skills & executive functioning
  • Has learned to focus his attention for 30-60 minutes on one task; to work largely independently for 2-3 hours at a time
  • Is able to complete a complex, multi-step task from beginning to end (e.g., wash a table)
  • Is able to self-monitor and control his impulses (e.g., wait his turn without getting upset when a work is being used by another child)
Language Arts 
  • Read aloud a typical children’s book – e.g., “Bear Snores On” by Karma Wilson, “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss, or Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
  • Writes complete sentences and short paragraphs in cursive handwriting
Mathematics 
  • Count as far as she wants – to 1,000 and beyond
  • Understand place value (the decimal system)
  • Do addition and subtraction into the 1,000’s (without and with carrying)
  • Skip-count to 100 by 2’s, 3’s, 4’s and 5’s
  • Multiply a multi-digit number by a single-digit number
  • Divide a multi-digit number by a single-digit number
  • Understand and write fractions, order them, add and subtract fractions with the same denominator
  • Know the names of geometric shapes and of three-dimensional objects
Cultural Studies
  • Know the names of the continents and can place them on a map; knows the names of the major countries in several continents, and the names of most US states
  • Has a basic scientific vocabulary – e.g., knows the names of all key plant parts, from roots to leaves to flowers; knows the names of key land & water forms and can identify & describe them
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