Kindergarten - John Milledge Academy Skip to content Kindergarten Throughout the year, students participate in cross-curricular opportunities: physical education, music, and art. Students also attend a variety of educational field trips. Kindergarten at John Milledge Academy provides a well-rounded, engaging foundation for young learners through hands-on, cross-curricular experiences. Students develop strong pre-reading and early literacy skills through phonics, sight words, and interactive read-alouds, while math instruction emphasizes number sense, patterns, shapes, and problem-solving with songs, games, and group activities. Science comes alive through exploration of the natural world, experiments, and observation, encouraging curiosity and critical thinking. Social studies introduces students to community, citizenship, geography, and American traditions, fostering respect, leadership, and a sense of belonging. Together, these experiences nurture a love of learning and prepare students for future academic success. Details by Subject Language Arts A large portion of our day is dedicated to teaching students to read. This includes pre-reading skills such as identifying letters and their sounds, recognizing and making rhyming words, dividing words into syllables, phonemic awareness, and speaking in complete sentences. Students engage in skills such as tracking print left to right and top to bottom, recognizing spelling patterns by reading basic sight words, and sounding out words. A large range of read-alouds, including big books, trade books, fiction and nonfiction, poems, and thematic books are used to help foster a love for reading, recognize story structures, and develop listening and comprehension skills. Math Students engage in a comprehensive, hands-on approach to developing essential math skills. Our math instruction includes whole group instruction and small group instruction—games, songs, and student-led activities to individually reinforce skills. These skills include recognizing and forming numbers through 20, counting by 2s, 5, and 10s to understand patterning, comparing objects, numbers and sets through measurement, manipulating a tensframe and properties of 2D shapes to build spatial reasoning, identifying coins and their values, telling time to the hour and half hour, basic addition and subtraction, and understanding a calendar and schedule. Science Kindergarteners begin to build an understanding of physical attributes such as how things are made,5 senses, motion-push or pull, fast or slow, living vs. nonliving things, time patterns, organisms, day and night, earth materials such as rocks, soil, and plants through hands-on exploration and discovery. Activities are designed based on students’ interests to capitalize on creativity and strengthen critical thinking skills. Our science curriculum promotes observation, experimentation, and discussion to foster a love for science and respect for our world. Social Studies Our kindergarteners explore a wide variety of topics, including American symbols, community helpers, and national holidays to build an understanding of the importance of celebrating diversity and differences, being a good American and friend, becoming a leader, and fostering community. They also begin to learn the basics of how to use a map, recognize their address and location on the globe. Our students establish what it means to have good citizenship, to work for what you want, the basics of goods and services, and an appreciation for jobs that help the community.