Pre-Kindergarten Program
Language Arts
Our language arts curriculum is a literature-based program that embraces a total language experience- speaking, listening, reading, writing, and phonics. It is through these early exposures to literature that children develop a real love of reading. Many opportunities are provided for the children to interact with literature and the printed word. Children create classroom experience books, choral read four-line poems, and listen to classic children’s stories.
Emphasis is also placed on alphabet recognition and beginning letter-sounds. The letters of the alphabet are the building blocks of our entire reading and writing system. The child who is able to recognize and name these letters and their sounds brings essential task-specific knowledge to the learning to read effort.
Mathematics
Children in the Preschool and Pre-Kindergarten classes explore math concepts through a variety of activity-centered projects. Basic skills such as rote counting and establishing a one-to-one correspondence are developed first. As our children grow mathematically, they will have opportunities to work with a whole myriad of manipulatives that make higher order thinking skills more concrete. Children will be exposed to such concepts as patterning, numbers, quantity, more than and less than, the concept of zero, counting by tens, geometry, and place value. Other math related topics that we explore are time, temperature, measurement, and money.
Science & Social Studies
Children are exposed to a variety of scientific concepts over the year. Our little scientists develop their problem-solving skills as they are asked to use the scientific method to hypothesize and draw conclusions based on their keen observations. Our science activities are linked to literature and other curricular areas.
Our literature-based social studies program draws on both fiction and non-fiction to help our children gain personal insight into the past, present, and future. We investigate areas such as historical events, people and places around the world, tolerance, and acceptance of diversity
Art
The art classroom experience involves many media such as papier-mache, clay, painting, and drawing. The program provides experiences for our children that involve thinking, seeing, feeling, and sensing, which result in concrete self-expression. The program also provides our children an awareness of form, texture, color, shape, and beauty. The art experiences supplement the ongoing curriculum at all levels.
Music – Literature Based Programs
Music and books complement one another. Our music program is one of musical links: we join books and recordings together to create a rich environment for our children.
Our students will read books and listen to music. Then they engage in discussion and activities illustrating the images and feelings the two shares. Children will also be exposed to music theory, rhythm, pitch, and instrument families will be covered.
“Music is a wonderful kind of magic. It can make people cry, jump or dance. Sometimes music ‘paints a picture’ in the imagination as people listen quietly or sing along. Music can also tell a story.” (Weil, The Magic of Music)
Meeting For Worship
We begin our day with a centering time of about five minutes of sitting in silence. It allows time for the children to find their center and get ready for the day. Children can learn to focus themselves by listening to the sounds of the room, a meditation bell, their own breathing, or whatever comes to mind. In addition, the Pre-Kindergarten class meets with the elementary school once a week for an extended Meeting For Worship. We expose the children to such ideas as how to live peacefully and simply, how to care for ourselves and the world around us, and how to accept differences in each other.