Preschool Class
The core pre-school program runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. There are 20 children in this class with one teacher, one teacher's assistant and two parents. Parent duty days number approximately 10 mornings per school year. In the pre-school program, children must be 4 years old by September 1st of the year in which they are enrolled.
Additional options for children in the pre-school are:
Four-Day Option
Parents may add Tuesday or Thursday morning to the core program. There is a limit of 10 children in the class with one teacher and one teacher's assistant.
Five-Day Option
Parents may add Tuesday and Thursday morning to the core program. There is a limit of 10 children in the class with one teacher and one teacher's assistant.
Extended Day Option
Parents may choose to have their children bring lunch and stay for an after-lunch program until 1:45 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and/or Friday. The extended day option is limited to 15 children with one teacher and one teacher's assistant.
The activities we plan in our Pre-school class, the way we organize the environment, select toys and materials, plan the daily schedule and talk with children, are all carefully designed to accomplish the goals of our curriculum and give each child a successful start in school.girl painting
Our Pre-school curriculum is based on several premises:
- Children learn best, and retain knowledge longer, when they have a need and/or desire to know.
- Rote learning creates robots - it satisfies adults but has little or no meaning to children except the pleasure he/she gains from the adults' reactions to his/her recitations.
- Learning comes through involvement - it takes place as a child interacts with his/her world and becomes part of the action. He/she explores the world through his/her senses, through discovery and curiosity.
- Learning begins where the child is, starting with the familiar and progressing to new understandings.
- Children learn through play. Play is the work of children just as the adult goes to work.
Our curriculum identifies goals in all areas of development. The most important goal of our curriculum is to help children become enthusiastic learners. This means encouraging them to be active and creative explorers who are not afraid to try out ideas and to think their own thoughts to help children become independent, self-confident, inquisitive learners. We're teaching them how to learn, not just in pre-school, but through their lives. We allow them to learn at their own pace, and in ways that are best for them. We strive to give them good habits and attitudes, particularly a positive sense of themselves.
The room arrangement is center-based and is carefully planned with distinct areas of interest in order to make choices clearer to children. A wide variety of materials are selected with curriculum goals in mind so that no matter where children play, they're learning. Materials and items are placed so that they're easy to see and children can get them independently. Quiet areas such as the book area and the discovery center are placed away from noisier, active centers such as blocks or house/socio-dramatic play area to give children a quiet place to go to when needed or desired. The art center is near our water source for easy clean up and so children can be more independent with washing skills. Blocks and house/socio-dramatic play centers are near each other to encourage cooperative, dramatic play.
The schedule of our day provides a balance of quiet and active times, between activities and experiences that give children time to engage fully and creatively in their work. Our daily schedule includes:
- Arrival/Table Activity Time: Primarily, it is planned to allow for children arriving at different times to be greeted by the teacher and other duty parents, to greet each other, work near each other to spark conversations and friendships, to be aware of others in our class whom they may not play with or notice during more active work time, to encourage learning from each other as well as to develop fine motor, readiness, eye-hand coordination and social skills.
- Meeting Time: It's the "official" beginning of our day, a time to come together as a community to share news and plan our day. It gives children a sense of purpose to our morning; a way to inform and include them...this is THEIR classroom.
- Center/WorkTime: This is the time for children to choose from a variety of activities and centers, moving from center to center, interacting freely with the various environments, to work creatively and industriously alone or with others. Focuses for learning areas include socio-dramatic play, construction, manipulatives, language, art, discovery and investigation, writing, etc. kids playing puzzles
The rest of our schedule also follows a plan and balance of activities: clean-up time is a community coming together, accepting responsibility and taking pride in our environment; books/story time helps stress the importance of and encouragement of a love of books; and indoor/outdoor time is used to improve large muscle skills, to socialize and to swing, run, slide, climb, etc.
In short, our goals for the Pre-school class are to help develop each child's physical, emotional, intellectual, social and creative needs. Most of all, it's to keep the "CHILD" in childhood, to allow each child the time to enjoy childhood, to provide a place to have fun and to be him/herself by making play an important part of our day.
