Programs

Children will develop autonomy and a confidence to experience new social situations by learning to:

• Share
• Take turns
• Give and take in conversation
• Ask for help and help others
• See self as important part of preschool classroom group; assist with developing class constitution
• Respect, tolerate and understand differences between self and others
• Celebrate differences and unique gifts of self and others
• Express feelings and ideas, and listens to feelings and ideas
• Develop empathy skills.
• Learn to take responsibility.
• Cooperate with others and accept limits.
• Learn self-control and accept logical consequences.
• Develop self-esteem, positive sense of self confidence.
• Practice solving problems alone and with peers, childcare teachers
• Practice being a leader and a follower
• Participate in daycare classroom decisions and actively give opinion
• Develop pride in work displayed
• See self and others with separate and unique skills

• Becoming comfortable with childcare classroom routine and schedule
• Being comfortable asking for help from the preschool teacher
• Practicing hand washing and bathroom hygiene
• Dressing themselves including shoes, socks and outerwear, hats, mittens
• Locating and caring for belongings
• Setting goals and celebrating achievements
• Sharing the daycare teacher’s time with classmates
• Serving self and peers snacks and drinks

• Strengthen eye-hand coordination
• Strengthen pincher grip (puzzles, play dough)
• Develop muscles necessary for writing
• Gain self-awareness and confidence through practic
• Express themselves by using variety of art mediums, writing tools
• Develop coordination needed to perform self-help skills (dressing, shoes, laces and velcro, buttons and zippers, turning on water, opening doors)

• Develop body awareness and sense of body control.
• Practice balance (stand on one foot, yoga, dancing)
• Build ball skills (roll, throw, catch, bounce, pass, dribble)
• Practice age appropriate group games (parachute, Duck, Duck Goose, bean bag toss, soccer)
• Move body in different ways (skip, hop, jump, gallop, run, sun sideways, crisscross, backwards, upside down)
• Understand health benefits of physical fitness
• Understand fitness as a social and group activity
• Group cooperative games
• Sand and water play

• Develop a love of reading and a respect for books
• Be introduced to classic and modern children’s literature
• Be introduced to a variety of genres: picture books, concept books, alphabet and counting books, realistic books, fantasy books, biographies
• Memorize predictable pattern books
• Associate reading with learning, imagination, wonder, and fun of course!
• Learn parts of story: beginning, middle, end
• Learn story elements: characters, plot, setting, and theme
• Practice predicting what happens next
• Practice repeating words and phrases
• Play act out stories and simple skits
• Learn book care
• Learn library etiquette
• Recall events from story, sequence of events
• Become familiar with layout of a book (front to back, top to bottom and reading left to right)
• Learns that one reads words not pictures, pictures provide contextual cues
• Gain ability to comprehend story from looking/listening to picture books and listening to book on cd/preschool teacher reading without visual cues (chapter books)
• Poetry
• Puppets

Children will become future storytellers, poets and journalists by:

• Recognize letters
• Associate letters with sounds
• Recognize name, classmate’s names and simple sight word recognition
• Letter-sound associations including recognize beginning and ending sounds
• Simple rhyming words
• Writing own stories
• Participating in group or peer written stories
• Recitation (memorizing and performing simple poems, nursery rhymes)
• Learn finger plays and songs
• Writing letters and words (play dough, salt and cornmeal trays, child markers and crayons, pencil)

Children will gain knowledge needed to become a lifelong learner by:

• Introduction to phonics
• Whole Language Approach
• Word study
• Left to right reading progression
• Point to word with finger (tracking)• Identify environmental print (childcare classroom labels, street and traffic signs, familiar logos and restaurant signs)

Children will ask questions and seek answers by:

• Explore picture sorts
• Gain competence with puzzles
• Solve simple riddles and story problems

Children will become deep thinkers and problem solvers by:

• Free explore math manipulative materials
• Patterning with manipulatives and real objects
• Sorting
• Counting forwards and backwards
• Concept of number, number sense
• Measurement
• Math vocabulary such as opposite, backward
• Real life math problems in the preschool classroom
• Colors and shapes
• Blocks and puzzles
• Sensory exploration including water play, rice and beans, cornmeal, salt and noodles- pouring, funnels, measuring, stirring, scooping

Children will be encouraged to develop appreciation for creative expression and understand its benefit as a tool of self-expression by:

• Opportunities to speak in front of peers
• Being introduced to a variety of appropriate music genres
• Learning music concepts such as rhythm, beat, lyrics, tune
• Dress up including encouraging non-gender bias
• Role-playing
• Playing musical instruments
• Musical games
• Create visual art while listening to different music genres
• Dancing
• Body awareness games

Children will become inquisitive and curious learners by:

• Experience real life science lab experiments
• Make predictions
• Ask questions to form a hypothesis
• Curriculum content includes physical, earth, life and environmental science topics
• Seasonal nature activities
• Outdoor classroom learning

Children will learn healthy eating and drinking habits relate to overall lifelong health, fitness and happiness by:

• Allowing parents to send in lunches and snacks if desired to address allergies, food habits, religious and nutrition requirements
• Eating healthy school lunches and snacks
• Cooking projects use fresh ingredients, organic when possible
• Encouraging healthy choices of fresh, organic ingredients
• On site gardens allow children to understand eating local and fresh

• Learning basic courtesy such as please, thank you, excuse me
• Waiting until all are served to eat
• Hello and goodbye greetings
• Making introductions and making guests feel welcome
• Knowing what makes a friend and being a friend
• Caring for work space and daycare classroom and playground clean up
• Positive conflict resolution within peer groups

Children will acquire age appropriate skills to learn how to stay safe and be confident in a world outside of the home by:

• Know first and last name
• Know address, parent’s cell numbers
• Stranger danger
• Fire safety
• Car safety
• Sun safety
• Playground safety