Do Americans normally call kindergarten a “kindergarten”? or do you call it in different ways (pre-school, etc)?

Plus, do kindergartners wear yellow uniforms in the US?

* In my home country S Korea, kindergartners wear yellow uniforms, yellow hats & even sometimes yellow bags. That’s why in Squid Game the killer girl robot in the first episode was wearing a yellow clothes.

35 comments
  1. Kindergarten is required in my state. Different states have different laws though. No uniforms for any grade unless it is a private school. Pre-school/Pre-kindergarten is for children under the age of 5 and spots are limited with the public school system. Low income families have first priority. Since it isn’t required, you can choose to pay for private Pre-K if you want.

  2. Yeah they go to kindergarten around age 5. No yellow uniform. No uniforms in my area of the US unless it’s a private school. Publicly funded schools don’t have the means in most places to require uniforms.

  3. Yes, it’s the “grade” before first grade. Typically 5 years old. We call it kindergarten. Uniforms aren’t universal, some schools have them.

  4. No uniform for the vast majority.

    Kindergartens USUALLY start for a kid that has turned 5. Preschool is 2.9 to 5.

  5. Kindergarten was required. You start at age 5.

    We had uniforms. It was a Catholic school. Plaid skirts for girls. Khaki pants for boys. Hated it.

  6. Kindergarten is required in my state unless you home school (which is still required kindergarten just at home).

    There are no uniforms.

  7. Kindergarten is mandatory in Florida if your kids are going to be starting first grade in a public school.

    Pre-school or pre-K comes before kindergarten and isn’t mandatory in any scenario.

    I’ve never heard of anything other than private schools requiring uniforms in Florida, other states may be different. For what it’s worth, our “uniform” was just a polo with the school logo. You had the choice of 4 colors, which were our school’s colors plus gray. It was a K-12 school, so that also applied to the kindergarten kids just as much as it did the seniors.

  8. grade school is sometimes referred to as “k-12.” this refers to kindergarten through 12th grade. there are 13 years of grade school, so you can think of kindergarten almost like “0 grade.” it’s usually in the same building or campus as other elementary school grades. elementary school is usually k-5, and sometimes k-6 depending on the school or district.

  9. they do. pre-school is 3-4 years old, kindergarten is 5 years old and is usually the official “start” of a child’s education.

    i’m not sure if pre-school is actually required.

    as for the uniforms, there’s no set rule, it depends on the school district. usually, public schools don’t require uniforms, but private schools do.

    thanks for the squid game tidbit!

  10. Yes, kindergarten is “kindergarten” in the United States.

    No, most public schools (government operated) do not have uniforms to attend. Private schools may or may not, it depends.

  11. yeah it’s called kindergarten here. Pre-school is for before kindergarten, and for kids younger than that it’s just daycare.

    There are no standard uniforms.

  12. We call it kindergarten but if the yellow is a thing it isn’t common. They usually wear whatever the parent dresses them in.

  13. Props for actually saying which country you’re from.

    Yes they go to Kindergarten, and we call it that too.

    No yellow uniform, and for the most part, no uniform at all in public schools.

  14. We just call it kindergarten, maybe just school sometimes. And no uniforms of any color unless maybe it’s a religious school.

  15. Public school students may or may not wear uniforms depending on the school district. Private school students wear uniforms almost without exception. This can start as early as kindergarten.

  16. We call it kindergarten, they do not wear uniforms in the vast majority of schools. We don’t have a national uniform standard at any age.

  17. Kindergarten is for kids around 5, it’s the K in K-12 education aka primary school. No to the yellow uniforms, I guess maybe there are some schools out there that do that but I’ve never heard of such a thing.

  18. It can vary by state, but almost all American kids go to kindergarten by age 6. Some kids also go to preschool before that, but it’s either private (expensive, usually religious) or part of a low-income family program. Where I live (state of Oregon), kindergarten isn’t mandatory, so a lot of the kids my son’s age just “skipped” it because it came during the years schools were closed. I wanted him to have the experience as a “soft” introduction into going to school, so I sent him to kindergarten last year instead of first grade. It was the right decision.

    Oh, and in my state, uniforms are illegal in public schools!

  19. Yeah, we call it kindergarten. If a child didn’t go to preschool, like me, than it would be the first round of school they would be attending. As for specifically yellow uniforms, no. I always felt like that was more of an Asian country thing but, students might have uniforms depending on the school, especially if it was a private school where student uniforms are extremely common.

  20. Kindergarten is what we called it when I was growing up. At least when I was a kid, we didn’t have uniforms.

  21. in the us, kindergarten is the name of the first year of primary school and is part of mandatory education. preschool is something separate, which is not mandatory. because of that we don’t call anything “*a* kindergarten,” we just say someone is in kindergarten when describing what grade they’re in.

    most schools in the us do not have uniforms.

  22. What many European countries call “kindergarten” we call “pre-school”. Kindergarten here is the initial year of grade school, for kids aged 5-6. The subsequent years are numbered 1-12, such that you graduate high school in 12th grade when you’re 17/18 years old. Kindergarten is the first year of elementary school (called “primary school” in Europe), which in *most* parts of the US lasts through 5th grade (ages 11/12).

    The year before kindergarten is called pre-K. This is part of pre school.

    (If you’ve also heard US high school years referred to by name, they’re grades 9/10/11/12, also referred to as freshman, sophomore, junior, senior years respectively. These naming conventions are then recycled in “college” (university).)

  23. Yeah we go to kindergarten at age 5. The word is borrowed from the Germans, who invented the concept. In most states it is free and attendance is mandatory. When I was in kindergarten, we wore navy blue shorts and baby blue polo jerseys. I don’t think most of our kindergartens have uniforms, anymore.

  24. While other people have answered this mostly to clear some things up I’ll add this: Kindergarten in the US is very different to Kindergarten in other countries. In the US Kindergarten is a start to school itself but in other countries is more similar to our pre-school here.

  25. Pre-school is for kids 3-4, and kindergarten starts at 5. I personally had a yellow and red pre-school uniform, but that isn’t universal. I had no uniform for kindergarten. There is also pre-k or T-K for kids born after September(?) which is from 4-5 and right before kindergarten. It’s not required, but it is part of formal schooling.

  26. Yes, Kindergarten is at ages 5/6. It is often in the same building and run by the same administration as grades 1-5 (ages 6/7-10/11), and not an entirely separate institution. It is effectively the first year of elementary school almost everywhere.

    Schoolchildren don’t generally wear uniforms here, so the same holds true for kindergarteners.

  27. Preschool is before kindergarten or “kindergarden” which people in my town said haha. No yellow uniforms or any uniforms unless in a private school or in a school that had gang violence or something

  28. Yes. I went to kindergarten. We wore whatever mom chose. No uniforms. My daughters went to private school and wore whatever they wanted in kindergarten. Uniforms started in first grade

  29. Pre-school and kindergarten are different things. Pre-school is usually age 3 and 4 and isn’t mandatory, while kindergarten is around age 5 and is mandatory in certain states. I’ve never heard of a pre-school or kindergarten that had uniforms, but it’s possible that some private schools do.

  30. Yes Kids go to Kindergarten, they start it at age 5. It is the entry grade for Elementary School. Pre-School is something different and is typically just a glorified day-care for younger kids.

    If the School has a Uniform for all students then they will wear one, but it is not different from those of the rest of the Elementary School, and would most likely not be Yellow. Most Schools in the US do not have uniforms.

  31. We call it kindergarten. It is separate from pre-school (pre-school comes before kindergarten). Kindergarten is simply the first year of the students being at the actual school. There are typically no uniforms associated.

  32. My kid started at 3 and it was 3k. Then she enrolled in 4k and now kindergarten which some do call 5k. Then it’s first grade for her

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