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Programs

The Oaks

4 - 5 Years

The Oaks

Our Oaks Pre-Kindergarten Program is designed with your child in mind. In order for us to successfully create this curriculum, we place ourselves on the children's level and experience what they experience. It is important to us that the children learn through play and enjoy what they are learning. The Learning Tree Preschool has designed a curriculum that is theme based and employs the daycare teachers' creativity and educational experience to ensure your child's academic success.

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Goals for the Oak Classroom:

Our goal is for each child entering the kindergarten classroom with confidence and enthusiasm! We want each child to perform at his/her highest level. Our daycare teachers make sure each child begins kindergarten with a well-rounded school background that comes from the variety of childcare classroom experiences and skills focus below:

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

What specific goals does Learning Tree have for a Preschool graduate?

  • Socially the child can play well with others, work in a small and larger group setting and respect classmates, daycare teachers and school materials.
  • Emotionally the child separates from home easily and looks forward to school, understands taking turns, can wait for the childcare teacher’s attention, expresses himself appropriately and knows when to ask for help.
  • Cognitively the child being curious about the preschool classroom, community and world and is eager to try new activities (writing, letters and sounds, scissors, exploring art materials, books, sight words)
  • Physically the child has good fine and gross motor coordination
  • Self-help skills including: dressing self, ability to care for oneself (using the bathroom, hand washing, eating, gathering supplies and cleaning up).

How does Learning Tree prepare students for kindergarten?

  • We focus on hiring experienced and well qualified preschool teachers who are trained continually on early learning best practices.
  • A strong and creative curriculum allowing ample time to explore a theme with classmates, lots of quality time to learn through play, and time to interact socially with classmates.
  • Freedom to express themselves with art, which focuses on the process versus the product.
  • Multiple opportunities to hear and experience quality children’s literature each day.
  • Realistic expectations in terms of developing self-help skills, following directions and interacting appropriately in a school setting.
  • Community outreach with partners for optimal development.

Our Oaks program offers a full time option only for $200.00 per week.

We require an annual $100.00 registration/supply fee per child.
Tuition and Enrollment Policies
  • Blanket: No larger than standard "throw" and must fit in cubby
  • Crayons: 1 Box of Jumbo Crayons
  • Elmer's Glue: Boys
  • Glue Sticks: 2 Sticks
  • Markers (washable): 2 packs of thin markers
  • Paint set, water color, 8 basic colors
  • Clear Pencil Box
  • Photos
  • Playdough
  • Safety Scissors
  • Shoes
  • Plastic Container: Shoebox sized
  • Tissues: Three 200 ct. boxes
  • Trash Bags: two packs of 13 gal.
  • Baby Wipes: 3 Packs for classroom use
  • Clorox Wipes
  • Ziplocks: 2 boxes gallon size
7:00 AM - 8:30 AM Arrival/Free Choice/Routine Care
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM Free Choice/Optional Teacher Directed Activity
9:00 AM - 9:45 AM Wash Hands/Morning Snack/Free Choice/Routine Care
9:45 AM - 10:30 AM Outside Play/Learning Time
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM Small Group Time/Wash Hands/Routine Care
11:15 AM - 11:50 AM Lunch Time
11:50 AM - 12:45 PM Circle Time/Routine Care
12:45 PM - 1:00 PM Mats Down
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM Rest Time/Quiet Free Time
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM Afternoon Snack
3:30 PM - 4:15 PM Outside Play
4:15 PM - 5:00 PM Wash Hands/Free Choice/Visitor Activities
5:00 PM - 5:30 PM Activity/Free Choice/Routine Care
5:30 PM Center Closed

Routine care is done on an individual schedule or as needed. Diapering is done every 1.5 to 2 hours or as needed.

If we can't go outside then physical activites will be provided in the childcare classroom. Such as a pop-up tunnel, music and movement, dramatic play, blocks, obstacles, etc.

Activity will include music, art, manipulative, story time, reading, writing, and math tasks.