What is the Difference: DK & K?

Welcome to Kindergarten!

We are proud to offer a Developmental Kindergarten (DK) program for our young 5s and encourage our families to engage us in questions and dialogue that will help to make an informed decision about the best placement for your child!


Our DK program is aimed to instruct students with birthdays June 1 through Dec. 1. The DK program is a structured day of learning with high expectations, but offers a slower pace for our youngest learners to have more time to develop their readiness for the social, emotional, and academic demands of kindergarten (and beyond). Generally, the end of the year expectations for DK are the end of the first trimester expectations for Kindergarten.

Our hopes in providing the DK option is to help our students grow in confidence, grow as leaders not only in kindergarten, but throughout the rest of their schooling, and provide them adequate time to develop instead of playing catch up to older peers. We recognize that our DK program has implications on the future including sports, puberty, driving age, and college entrance age. Affording our kids the DK opportunity helps these students stay in line with kids their age instead of meeting these milestones at a younger age than their peers.

Developmental Kindergarten

  • An hour + of play/social time (separate from lunch recess).

  • Rest time (approximately 30 minutes); rest time decreases as stamina for learning increases. 

  • Students learn basic problem solving and social skills along with the ability to learn academics at a slower pace.

  • More time devoted to learn 1-2 letters a week; oral retelling; labeling pictures.

  • Expected to leave DK reading a repeated, predictable pattern book.

  • Identifies and writes numbers 0-10; counts to 50 by ones.

     

    • Both DK & K

  • Structured day; centered around learning K curriculum.

  •  Learn about school routines.

  • Work on fine motor development.

  • Specials schedule; both programs have the same frequency and duration for lunch, recess, music, PE, art, Spanish, and media/library.

  • Receive report cards; parent-teacher conference held. 

    • Kindergarten

  • Up to one hour of play/social time (separate from lunch recess)

  • Faster pace- For example, learn a letter a day; written retelling (producing multiple sentences by the end of the year)

  • Expected to leave Kindergarten reading a book without predictable patterns that includes dialogue; multiple characters, and information.

  • Writes numbers from 0-20; counts to 100 by ones and tens.