Some 180 kindergarten children from low income families were tested midway through the school year on an instructional concepts inventory created by the Southwest Regional Laboratory for Educational Research and Development (SRL). The inventory was designed to measure the basic concepts known by a child. It is specifically geared to test kindergarten pupils for their skill with concepts necessary for successful achievement in the first grade. The inventory draws from a list of 86 concepts grouped into seven categories: color, size, shape, position, amount, time, and equivalence. The inventory, as used in this study, had 36 items involving the seven categories. Each item consisted of a picture illustration of a concept and two distractors. Each child tested was asked to point to the illustration of the concept named by the examiner. The test results showed that, on an average, the subjects knew about 23 of the 36 concepts. The results indicated that kindergarten children from low income families needed instruction in the basic concepts. SRL is developing a program to teach the basic concepts measured by this inventory. (WD)