What Are Florida’s Kindergarten Math Standards?

Florida’s kindergarten math standards are set by the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) framework, which replaced the state’s earlier Common Core-aligned standards. The content is organized into five strands: Number Sense and Operations, Algebraic Reasoning, Measurement, Data Analysis and Probability, and Geometric Reasoning. Each strand lists specific benchmarks your child is expected to meet by the end of the year, and progress is checked three times through the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST).

Number Sense and Operations

This is the biggest strand and where kindergarteners spend most of their math time. It covers counting with meaning, reading and writing numbers, comparing quantities, a first look at place value, and basic addition and subtraction.

Counting and Cardinality

Your child should be able to count a group of up to 20 objects, write the matching numeral, and understand that rearranging the objects doesn’t change how many there are. That last piece is cardinality: the final number you say when counting tells you the total.¹

The skill also runs the other direction. Given a number from 0 to 20, your child should be able to count out exactly that many objects, and should use the words “first” through “fifth” to describe positions in a sequence.¹

Comparing two groups of up to 20 objects is part of this group too. Kindergarteners describe which group has more, fewer, or the same number using the phrases “less than,” “equal to,” and “greater than.” They are not expected to use the symbols <, >, or = yet.¹

Counting Sequences and Early Place Value

Counting then moves beyond physical objects. Your child should recite number names to 100 by ones and by tens, count forward from any starting number within 100, and count backward within 20. The backward counting piece is easy to miss at home but the standards treat it as its own skill.¹

Place value makes its first appearance. Children represent whole numbers from 10 to 20 as a group of ten plus some leftover ones. A child might describe 13 as “one ten and three ones” using blocks or drawings. This idea becomes the backbone of multi-digit math in later grades.¹

Kindergarteners also start using a number line, locating, ordering, and comparing numbers from 0 to 20 with the same “less than,” “equal to,” and “greater than” vocabulary.¹

Addition and Subtraction

Computation starts with adding two whole numbers from 0 to 10 and the related subtraction facts, often with counters or ten-frames. By the end of the year, the goal is reliable accuracy on adding two one-digit numbers with sums up to 10 and the matching subtraction facts, even if speed is still developing.¹

Algebraic Reasoning

The label sounds advanced, but at this grade it means understanding how numbers combine and what the equal sign actually means.

Making 10 and Breaking Numbers Apart

Your child should know the number that pairs with any number from 1 to 9 to make 10. If the teacher says “7,” the answer is 3. These “friends of 10” pairs are a mental math foundation that keeps paying off in later elementary grades.¹

Children also explore all the ways a number from 0 to 10 can split into two addends. The number 5, for example, can be 0 + 5, 1 + 4, or 2 + 3. This decomposition work builds flexible thinking about how numbers relate.¹

These skills then show up in word problems with sums up to 10, solved with objects, drawings, or equations. One thing to know as a parent: students are not expected to read the word problems themselves. The teacher reads them aloud.¹

What the Equal Sign Means

One benchmark targets something that trips students up for years if it’s not addressed early: the meaning of “=”. Many children assume the equal sign means “the answer comes next,” which causes trouble with equations like 7 = 9 − 2. Kindergarteners explain why addition or subtraction equations are true using objects or drawings, with the result sitting on either side of the equal sign and with equations that have two or three terms.¹

Measurement

Measurement at this grade moves from naming what can be measured, to comparing two objects, to measuring with informal units.

Your child first learns to identify which attributes of an object can be measured, such as length, volume, or weight. No actual measuring happens at that stage. Next comes direct comparison: placing two objects side by side to see which is longer, heavier, or holds more, using words like “shorter,” “taller,” “heavier,” “lighter,” “holds more,” and “holds less.”¹

The piece parents sometimes miss is non-standard measurement. Children measure the length of objects using units like paper clips or colored tiles, laid end to end with no gaps or overlaps, for lengths up to 20 units. This is a first real measuring experience and it builds the concept that measurement means covering a distance with equal-sized units. Standard rulers and inches come later.¹

Data Analysis and Probability

Kindergarten has a single benchmark here. Your child collects objects, sorts them into categories based on shared features, counts how many are in each category, and compares the totals. Results can be reported by speaking, writing the numeral, or drawing. A bag of mixed shapes, for instance, might be sorted into circles, triangles, and rectangles, with each pile counted to see which has the most and fewest.¹

Children are not expected to build formal graphs or charts on their own yet. The focus stays on sorting and counting, which doubles as practice for the number sense strand.

Geometric Reasoning

Kindergarten geometry covers recognizing and comparing shapes. Your child identifies two-dimensional shapes (circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares) and three-dimensional figures (spheres, cubes, cones, and cylinders) regardless of their size or orientation. Instruction uses both examples and non-examples, so children learn what makes a triangle a triangle rather than just memorizing one picture of one.²

From there, children compare two-dimensional figures by features like the number of sides and corners. A child might explain that a triangle and a rectangle both have straight sides, but a triangle has three sides and a rectangle has four.²

One boundary worth noting: the B.E.S.T. standards do not include hexagons at the kindergarten level. If you see hexagons listed in older Florida materials, that was part of the previous Common Core-aligned framework.

How Teachers Approach the Work

Alongside the content benchmarks, Florida includes seven Mathematical Thinking and Reasoning (MTR) standards that apply from kindergarten through twelfth grade. They describe how children should engage with math, not just what they should know, and teachers weave them into daily lessons rather than teaching them separately.³

The MTRs cover effortful learning, showing problems in multiple ways, choosing efficient methods, discussing their thinking, looking for patterns, checking whether answers are reasonable, and connecting math to the real world. In a kindergarten classroom, this looks like a child explaining to a partner why 3 + 2 equals 5 by pointing to a drawing, or noticing that today’s sorting activity uses the same counting steps as yesterday’s. The MTR standards are why your child’s teacher asks “how do you know?” as often as “what’s the answer?”³

How Progress Is Measured

Florida tracks kindergarten math through the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST), using the Star Math computer-adaptive test for grades K–2. Your child takes FAST three times during the 2025–26 school year:⁴

PM1 (Fall): August 4 – September 26, 2025
PM2 (Winter): December 1, 2025 – January 23, 2026
PM3 (Spring): April 13 – May 29, 2026

Those windows are when each district can schedule its testing, not how long an individual child spends on the test. Your child’s exact dates are set by the school or district. Results come back as a scale score that tracks growth across the three windows, a percentile rank compared to other kindergarteners nationwide, and a B.E.S.T. achievement level showing where performance sits relative to grade-level expectations.⁵

Kindergarten Enrollment Age in Florida

To enroll in a Florida public school kindergarten, your child must turn five on or before September 1 of the school year.⁶ A child who turns five on September 2 or later typically waits until the following school year. District school boards set their own enrollment procedures within that state rule, so check with your local district for registration deadlines and required documents.

1
Florida Department of Education. Grade Kindergarten Mathematics
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Florida Department of Education. Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards for Mathematics
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Florida Department of Education. Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards for Mathematics MTRs
4
Florida Department of Education. Florida Statewide Assessment Program 2025-2026 Schedule
5
Florida Department of Education. 2025-26 FAST K-2 Fact Sheet
6
The Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 1003.21 – School Attendance