What should a 5 year old know academically?

Children learn and develop at their own pace but most 5 year olds can identify and describe shapes in terms of length of sides, number of sides, and number of corners.  They are able to sort shapes and can use comparative language to describe objects such as in/out, short/tall, on/off and so on. Most 5 year olds can count to at least 20 by ones and may be even be able to skip count.  They will know several colors; the 26 letters of the alphabet and some word sounds as they begin to work on the building blocks for reading.