Here's a good source for curriculum norms at any grade level. This K one is pretty great for bursting the GT denial bubble in those of you with pre-K GT kids.
http://www.worldbook.com/wb/Students?curriculum/kindergartenI know this question comes up a lot--along with a lot of "No way! That's all they expect them to do? Nuh-uh!?"--so I thought this resource might be useful.
Here's another useful list, same comments.
http://www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopmenttracker/index.htmlA nice thing about this one is that it distinguishes things that "almost all" children will be able to do at a given age from things that "most", "some" or "a few" children will be able to do. Watching other children convinces me that their maths descriptions are really on the low side, though; e.g., his (unselective) school is routinely expecting all children to do things that are beyond what this checklist suggests would be ND. So don't get too excited ;-)
Excellent info, thanks guys!
Okay, thanks for the info. I do think it is more detailed than the appendix in Ruf's book, but wow my 2 year old is already up to some 2nd grade abilities. And the body parts still amazes me. She could identify all her major and minor body parts before she was a year old and definitely name them all by 18 mths. (We are talking not only head but eyes, cheeks, chin, nose, mouth, forehead, eyebrows, and eyelashes) And the naming of farm animals by kindergarten is funny to me too. She has so many animals in the sea, air and on the ground. Plus knows the name for a lot of the baby animals and the sounds they all make. Which was really fun when we went to the Memphis zoo. She had her list of what animals she 'had' to see (and in her words: I need to see a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros and a monkey and of course a panda!) and she saw all of them plus many many more which included a 1 week old baby giraffe. So cute!
I could go on and on but yep. Your right. I still think there is something wrong with the list.