Children are born as social beings.  As babies, they are introduced to friends and passed to family members of elder generations.  As they grow, they start to understand their connection to their families, communities and eventually society as a whole.  As parents we want to encourage our children to make investigations about themselves and the world around them.  At Sunshine Academy we teach children about our world through imaginary travel.

 

Social studies skills help children with problem solving as well as coping with social and emotional issues.  Some of the things kids are expected to know by the end of kindergarten:

 

• Left from right.

• How to identify traffic symbols.

• How to distinguish map parts, such as the difference between land and water as well as identify general areas.

• How to put events in temporal order.

• A general understanding of the definition of “history”, meaning events and people that occurred in a different time period.

• State and national symbols and icons.

 

While these skills and ideas aren’t supposed to be “mastered” until the end of kindergarten, we believe that toddlers and preschoolers can grasp a lot of these on some level.