Pre-Kindergarten Curriculum Overview
The pre-kindergarten classroom is designed for students to be actively engaged in a variety of activities promoting exploration, critical thinking and hands-on learning while interacting with peers and teachers. Under a curricular theme, important concepts and skills in language, mathematics, science, and social studies are integrated to build on students’ prior knowledge and connect learning. In an enriching and nurturing environment, children’s growth in the areas of social/emotional development, physical development, and cognitive development are fostered.
Communication Arts
Pre-Kindergarten students are engaged in a language-rich environment that offers pre-reading and pre-writing activities to develop a strong literacy foundation. Through read-alouds, responses to literature, emergent writing, independent time with books, games and songs, students’ knowledge and use of reading and writing skills expands throughout the year. Importance is placed on phonemic awareness, concepts of print, phonetics, sight word recognition, and vocabulary development as well as a life-long appreciation for literature and a love of reading.
Mathematics
Mathematical thinking and concepts are woven into the school experience each day. Using manipulatives, games, calendars, graphs, and a variety of activities, students increase understanding of concepts and are given opportunities to practice new skills independently. Number sense is a key component of the pre-kindergarten curriculum. Students develop comprehension of numbers, number relationships and number use, essential fundamentals for future mathematical concepts. Patterns, geometry, measurement, and data analysis are additional areas of mathematics included in the pre-kindergarten curriculum.
Social Studies
A large focus in the pre-kindergarten day is devoted to building relationship skills, communicating effectively, problem solving, developing responsibility for one’s self and cooperating with others. Under the year-long theme, ‘All About Me’, students will explore the importance of their role in the school community, the importance of families, holidays and traditions, and how children’s stories reflect life of long ago and today. Field experiences, community service and guest speakers will enhance the social studies curriculum.
Science
Building on interests and prior knowledge, science topics are integrated into the curriculum and allow students to explore the natural world. Hands-on activities give students opportunities to explore concepts, test ideas, and use a variety of tools to enhance learning. Students will investigate weather and seasons, the five senses, and unusual animals of the world. Scientific concepts such as patterns in nature, physical properties, cause and effect, and properties of matter will be explored. Students will develop vocabulary, make predictions, observe materials, record data and share information about what they learn.
Technology
Computers use, which is integrated into the school day, gives an additional avenue to reinforce concepts and skills learned in other areas of the curriculum. Students will access games, activities and age-appropriate sites. Occasionally, short videos on the Internet will be used to expand classroom learning. Students will also have the opportunity to begin keyboarding skills and create Word documents.
