If you’ve typed “what should a kindergartner know” into Google at 11pm, you’re not alone — and you’re asking exactly the right question. Kindergarten is the year academic habits take root, and knowing the benchmarks helps you spot when your child is thriving (and when they might need a little extra support) long before a report card tells you.
Here’s what Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) standards expect kindergartners to master by the end of the year, and how homeschooling families can hit every one of them
Reading & Language Arts
Kindergarten is the year of explicit, systematic phonics. By year’s end, your child should be able to:
- Identify letters (upper and lower case) and match them to their sounds
- Blend and segment simple words (like sounding out “c-a-t”)
- Recognize print concepts — that we read left to right, that words are made of letters, that a sentence starts with a capital and ends with punctuation
- Retell a story in their own words, identifying characters and the main idea
- Begin writing letters, simple words, and short sentences (inventive spelling is expected and healthy at this stage)
Math
Kindergarten math is all about number sense:
- Count to 100 by ones and tens
- Count a set of objects accurately and understand that the last number counted tells you “how many”
- Understand basic addition and subtraction with numbers 0–10 using objects, fingers, or drawings
- Identify and describe basic shapes (circles, squares, triangles, rectangles)
- Compare quantities — more, less, equal
Science & Social Studies
Kindergarten science is exploratory rather than test-driven: observing the natural world (weather, plants, animals, the five senses) and beginning basic cause-and-effect thinking. Florida’s official Kindergarten Social Studies course introduces basic concepts across four strands — history, geography, economics, and citizenship — through age-appropriate topics like family traditions, maps of familiar places, wants vs. needs, and what it means to be a good citizen at home and school.
Signs Your Kindergartner Is On Track
- Can they point to and name at least 20+ letters?
- Can they count a pile of 15–20 objects without skipping or double-counting?
- Do they enjoy being read to and can they answer simple “what happened” questions?
- Can they write their own first name?
If some of these feel shaky, that’s completely normal — kindergarten skills develop in fits and starts, not a straight line.
A Note for Homeschooling Families
One of the best things about homeschooling kindergarten is that you don’t need a worksheet to hit these benchmarks. Reading a bedtime story every night, counting snacks at the table, and sorting laundry by color all build the exact skills Florida expects — you’re probably doing more of this than you realize.
If you’d like a structured way to track progress, satisfy Florida’s homeschool requirements, and have support, Ascend STEM Academy is a Florida umbrella school built specifically for homeschooling families. One nice perk: families enrolled with Ascend don’t have to keep or submit a portfolio, so you can focus on the good part — watching your kindergartner fall in love with learning.
For curated, grade-level activities and curriculum ideas, enrolled families should check out our Homeschool Resource Explorer.
Continue the Series
Ready to see what’s next? Read our guide to what a first grader should be learning. If your child has ADHD, autism, or anxiety, our practical guides for ADHD, autism, and anxiety may also help.
