from what ive heard basically they need to self dress and self toilet, they need to know how to hold a pencil properly, know which way to hold a book and that words go from left to right, recognize their own name, count to 5. uuummmm that's all I can remember right now. I have noticed with the last three kids I have sent off to jk and well as the one i have now that will be going in the fall..... they don't have a clue!!!!! my own kids all could recognize every letter of the alphabet (upper and lower case) they could print their own name, could count to at least 20, knew their address and telephone number, days of the week and left and right ....my youngest is turning 4 in august and heading to jk this fall and yesterday he counted to 120. It boggles my mind that these kids cant recognize and letter of the alphabet and that the parents don't see this as a problem. I know that they will catch up but kids are such sponges at this age why not give them the tools to succeed now .....the dcg I sent off to jk last sept would cry everytime I asked her what a letter was or if I asked her to go get me a certain letter off the fridge ninety percent of the time she brought me a number ......she didn't know the difference between letters and numbers. to me that is sad .....