GOLD® Objectives and Dimensions (WaKIDS) 

Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills (WaKIDS) is a process of connecting families, elementary schools and early education programs so that new kindergartners can be ready to start school.

All Washington public elementary schools participate in WaKIDS, which includes 3 elements:

• Family connection
• Whole-child assessment
• Early learning collaboration

Social–Emotional

1. Regulates own emotions and behaviors
   • Manages feelings
   • Follows limits and expectations
   • Takes care of own needs appropriately

2. Establishes and sustains positive relationships
   • Interacts with peers

3. Participates cooperatively and constructively ingroup situations
   • Balances needs and rights of self and others
   • Solves social problems

Physical

4. Demonstrates traveling skills
5. Demonstrates balancing skills
6. Demonstrates fine-motor strength and coordination
   • Uses fingers and hands
   • Uses writing and drawing tools

Language

8. Listens to and understands increasingly complex language
   • Comprehends language
   • Follows directions

9. Uses language to express thoughts and needs
   • Speaks clearly

10. Uses appropriate conversational and other communication skills
    • Engages in conversations

Cognitive

11. Demonstrates positive approaches to learning
    • Attends and engages
    • Persists
    • Solves problems

12. Remembers and connects experiences
    • Recognizes and recalls

13. Uses classification skills
14. Uses symbols and images to represent something not present
    • Thinks symbolically
    • Literacy

15. Demonstrates phonological awareness
    • Notices and discriminates rhyme
    • Notices and discriminates smaller and smaller units of sound

16. Demonstrates knowledge of the alphabet
    • Identifies and names letters
    • Uses letter–sound knowledge

17. Demonstrates knowledge of print and its uses
    • Uses print concepts

18. Comprehends and responds to books and other texts
    • Uses emergent reading skills

19. Demonstrates emergent writing skills
    • Writes name
    • Mathematics

20. Uses number concepts and operations
    • Counts
    • Quantifies
    • Connects numerals with their quantities

21. Explores and describes spatial relationships and shapes
    • Understands shapes