Pre-Kinder
Three-year-olds develop language skills through active learning experiences. They engage in imaginative activities. They create puppet shows, build block structures, invent games, and shape sand castles. Books are everywhere. Our Pre-Kinder students listen to stories and poems read aloud every day. English is spoken in the classrooms, and teachers engage children in lively and caring conversation to build their emerging language skills.
PK students learn to recognize and identify letters in signs, labels, lists, charts, graphs, and other print around their classroom and throughout the school. Letter/sound associations are presented in many ways. Morning Circle and a predictable daily schedule foster a stable and nurturing learning environment. Letters, repeated words, phrases, and rhymes are highlighted to help students learn about print. PK students take home books each week to share with their families.
Through ever-changing learning centers and experiential class activities based on the current curricular project, our PK students begin to explore the world of numbers and shapes, biology and engineering, astronomy and zoology.
Music and movement, art, and physical education are important parts of the PK program, as is our social-emotional learning curriculum. We take very seriously the social and emotional development of our youngest students, and through classroom interaction and guidance and counseling programming, we nurture personal growth in the areas of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making, using developmentally appropriate standards in line with the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning.