Curriculum

The primary purpose of our school is to provide a rich environment geared to the young child’s rhythm of development and designed to nourish his/her spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social and physical growth.

Our curriculum, the Total Program for the Total Child, is designed to give the child a variety of experiences in science, social studies, music, art, religion, health, safety, and physical education, as well as begin development on the basic skills in language arts and math concepts.

Unit Method of Study:  All preschool and kindergarten classes utilize a unit method of study. This involves a study of various subjects from nursery rhymes to space. Books, finger plays, music and art activities are correlated with the subject.

Free Choice Time:  All classes incorporate Free Choice Time, where the child moves freely from one interest center to another, exploring, experimenting, testing, asking questions, sharing information.

Art:  Offers creative expression through finger-painting, easel painting, clay, pasting, and other media.

Block Construction:  Encourages creative problem-solving activities; helps the child achieve understanding of sizes, shapes, and numbers, balance precision, form; encourages language development as he/she works, shares, and talks with others.

Family Living Centers:  These centers stimulate self-expressive activities, dramatic play, and thus a better understanding of who he/she is and what he/she can do.

Manipulative Devices:  Includes puzzles, stringing beads, devices designed to help build eye-hand coordination, number concepts, and concepts of shapes and sizes.

Language Arts:  Provides rich experiences in children’s literature, conversation, storytelling, puppets, and dramatization.  These all establish  a good foundation for reading. The goals are to help develop listening abilities, enlarge vocabulary, and to grow in ability to use language for expressing ideas, thinking through problems and to be better able to communicate with others.

Social Science:  The child is given the opportunity to explore the history, traditions and customs associated with special days and celebrations. We also spend time comparing and contrasting our families, our relationships and responsibilities with friends and families.

Creative Movement:  Creative movement is offered to our preschool and kindergarten classes once per week.  These activities enhance hand/eye coordination and gross motor skills for children.

Outdoor Activity:  Geared to large muscle development and learning skills of balance and coordination. Playground time gives the child the opportunity to exercise in fresh air, provides another area of development and social growth, and develops self-discipline for free movement in a group.

Religion:  “Teach a child to choose the right path, and when he is older he will remain upon it.” (Proverbs 22:6) We provide a Christian atmosphere and Christian guidance for the transition of a child from home to school. The loving relationship we have for the child cannot be stressed enough. Twice a month, we have a short children’s chapel service.  The children look forward to this time and learn about God and his love. Through this teaching we hope to help children develop a habit of being thankful for things enjoyed in life, increase the child’s ability to make choices between right and wrong, and help the students recognize behavior patterns desirable for all children.

Reading Readiness (PreK program):  Alpha Time is a comprehensive, multi-sensory pre-reading program designed to delight and instruct, providing a solid groundwork in the printed alphabet and letter sounds by using the child’s world of imagination, fun and fantasy.  Children meet the Letter People in the form of inflatable huggable, make-believe friends who form a mini-society with no social, ethnic, nor economic barriers to inhibit their free acceptance and who are the leading characters and the focus of most activities. The emphasis is on active participation in creating, discovering, exploring, and dramatizing in a child-centered environment.

No entry skills are presumed by Alpha Time. Basic language art skills are developed by listening and doing. Children learn to verbalize their ideas and feelings, an important prerequisite in learning to read. The program establishes specific behavioral objectives and directs the teachers’ efforts toward these goals. As they gain insights into their own feelings and learn to relate to their classmates, the children develop a positive self-image.  This innovative program is a happy combination of cognitive and affective learning presented through stories, pictures, games, songs and best of all, fun and laughter.

Reading, Mathematics, and Writing Readiness (PreK program):  Children will develop fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and problem-solving skills through the use of developmentally appropriate manipulatives that are colorful and interesting. They will learn to listen and follow directions as they develop skills and learn concepts necessary for the later success in reading, writing, and mathematics. This activity-oriented program is designed to ensure the individual success of pre-kindergarten children.

Literature/Phonics (Kindergarten program):  The Wright Group provides an overall literacy program which includes sequential phonics activities that help develop phonological and phonemic awareness, letter recognition and writing. The literature experience includes Shared Reading, Guided Reading, Decodable Readers, Read Aloud Books, Wordless or Read Alone Books, Journals, Read Along Story Tapes, Song Tapes, Games, Rhyming and Poetry.

Mathematics (Kindergarten program):  As caring teachers begin to help young children develop a friendliness and proficiency with numbers, geometry, and measurement, they must examine their answer to the question, “How do children come to understand mathematics?”  Our math curriculum, Math Their Way, offers complete instruction in every aspect of the problem-solving process to help teachers answer this question. Most mathematics educators believe that young children learn best if real materials as well as textbook pages are used, and if children talk to each other in their own language about what they are doing with the materials.  Students are shown the theory and logic behind mathematical principles with the focus on understanding rather than memorization