Age 3&#x2F;4 is considered &quot;pre-school&quot;, and is just playing. (It&#x27;s optional; there&#x27;s no public preschool, mostly just Christian private preschools that are effectively a less-religious outgrowth of catechism—most of them are still physically attached to a church in some manner. Kids make crafts and take field trips [with heavy church community volunteer involvement] to parks and public pools and pumpkin patches and so forth.)<p>Kindergarten is age 5-to-6, and is sort of to school as Candy Land is to board games: no actual subject matter, but teaching kids the meta-skills of &quot;following the rules&quot;: sitting at desks, listening attentively to lectures, responding to questions and not interrupting others, time management during projects, etc. (Not as dreadful as it sounds; the &quot;lectures&quot; are group story-time, the &quot;questions&quot; are things like &quot;what did you do this weekend&quot;, etc.)<p>Also, there&#x27;s some attempt in kindergarten at ensuring everyone can read—i.e., it serves as remedial education backstopping the bad parents who never read with their children. That continues on in grade 1, but it&#x27;s good to know early who the problem children (problem parents) are.