People and places
Alberta's Kindergarten social studies theme is culture, tradition and community. It is brand new: the K–3 social studies curriculum was implemented in September 2025, replacing a program from 2005.
What Alberta asks for by the end of Kindergarten
The subject: Social studies
- Places in communities — where people live, shop, learn and get help.
- Cultures, traditions and histories, including their own family's.
- Needs and wants, and the difference between them.
- Leaders in communities, and what a leader does.
- Cooperation and collaboration in groups.
The 2025 curriculum puts history, geography, economics, politics and citizenship in every grade, starting here. Needs and wants is the economics; leaders is the politics; places is the geography.
The words, first
These are the terms a teacher will use at a parent interview, defined before anything below uses them.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Community | A group of people who share a place or something they care about. A child belongs to several at once: family, class, neighbourhood. |
| Culture | The way a group of people live — what they eat, wear, speak, celebrate and believe. |
| Tradition | Something a group does the same way, on purpose, year after year, because of what it means. |
| Need | Something you must have to live and be well: food, water, shelter, clothing, care. |
| Want | Something you would like but can live without. The distinction is the point of the outcome, and it takes practice — to a five-year-old a want feels exactly like a need. |
| Leader | Someone who helps a group decide and get things done. A teacher, a coach, a chief, a mayor. |
| Cooperation | Working with other people so the group gets somewhere it could not get alone. |
Needs
Wants
What to do at home
- Walk the block and name it — That is a school, that is a shop, that is a fire hall. Places in the community is a walking outcome.
- Tell a family story — Where grandparents came from, why you eat what you eat at a particular time of year. Culture and tradition start with their own.
- Need or want, at the shop — Milk or the sparkly pencil? Say which is which out loud, without turning it into a no.
- Point out the people who help — The crossing guard is making a decision for the group's safety. That is what a leader does, at the size a five-year-old can see.
- Do one job together — Setting the table as a two-person job, with the parts divided up, is cooperation — and it is easier to talk about afterwards than in the abstract.
Sheets you can print for this
- Need or want? — sort the pictures
- My community — four things to draw
The expectations above are paraphrased from Alberta Education's New K–6 curriculum fact sheets, which publish a snapshot of each grade rather than the complete program of studies. Alberta's full programs are at alberta.ca/curriculum.