The kindergarten math checklist
These are the skills most curricula, including Common Core, expect by the end of kindergarten. Treat them as a map rather than a deadline — the spread between children at this age is wide and mostly uninformative about later ability.
- Counting: count to 100 by ones and by tens; count forward from any number, not just from one.
- Counting objects: count up to 20 objects accurately, saying one number per object.
- Comparing: decide which of two groups has more, fewer or the same, up to 10 objects.
- Numerals: recognise and write 0 to 20.
- Addition and subtraction: solve problems within 10 using objects, drawings or fingers.
- Number pairs: know pairs that make 5, and start on pairs that make 10.
- Shapes: name circle, square, triangle, rectangle, cube, cone, cylinder and sphere.
- Measurement: compare two objects by length or weight and describe the difference.
One-to-one correspondence matters more than counting high
A child who counts to 100 but assigns two numbers to one object has not yet learned to count. A child who counts twelve buttons accurately, one number per button, has.
This is called one-to-one correspondence and it is the single most predictive kindergarten skill. If you check only one thing on this list, check this one: put out a row of objects and watch whether each gets exactly one number.
Subitising: the skill nobody names
Subitising is recognising how many are in a small group without counting — seeing three dots and knowing it is three. It is what lets a child later add 3 + 4 without counting from one, and it is rarely taught explicitly.
Dice, dominoes and playing cards build it faster than worksheets do, because the arrangements repeat until the pattern becomes instant.
When a gap is worth attention
Most gaps at five close on their own. A few are worth raising with a teacher: a child who cannot count objects accurately to ten by the end of kindergarten, who cannot recognise numerals to ten, or who shows no sense that four is more than two.
Two caveats. Children with summer birthdays are often nearly a year younger than classmates in the same year group, which accounts for a great deal of apparent delay. And a child who can do these things with objects but not on paper has a writing problem, not a math problem.