Preschool

Social-emotional learning informs all aspects of the preschool experience and is integrated throughout the curriculum. This learning centers on the work they are doing to understand themselves and each other, celebrating their differences and similarities.

Preschool students improve their understanding of how to learn as individuals and how to work with each other through discussion and collaboration. By the end of the year, they have the skills to learn as a group and to develop rewarding friendships. They have gained independence, an enthusiasm for learning, and social emotional skills to guide their personal choices and decision making.

In addition to the core curricular components of literacy, mathematics, and inquiry, students have many opportunities to practice group dynamics and be part of a community. The progress of preschool students is tracked with formal, informal, and narrative assessments. Preschool teachers constantly observe the children in their care, and engage in open and regular communication with families throughout the year.

Preschool Academic Overview

The Arts

In the visual arts, preschool students learn to be artists in a community space and discover new ways to express themselves, their thinking, and their learning. Music classes focus on the musical community and group awareness, as children develop a disposition to musical learning through singing, beat, and movement. Woodshop is a space where students engage in individual and collaborative projects, and develop understandings about process, safety, trial and error, and success.

Literacy

Preschoolers learn the value of words and develop confidence in their ability to share ideas. Students and teachers tell stories (both real and pretend), read books, and discuss the intricacies and surprises of words, sounds, and language. Children are asked to express their thoughts pictorially and use the language that goes with their pictures.

Skills:

Expressive and receptive language
Phonemic awareness (rhyming, recognizing sounds in words)
Beginning to recognize letters
Concepts of print (holding a book, recognizing that print carries meaning)
Re-telling and creating stories through drawings, creative movement, drama, and conversations
Asking and answering questions about stories read aloud
Using drawings, shapes, and letters to represent thinking

Mathematics

Students in preschool build mathematical theories through experiential learning. They use tools and materials that inspire them to apply their natural curiosity to their research. As they play, children’s authentic questions emerge, and teachers respond with materials, discourse, and experiences that strengthen their mathematical concepts. Children use the language of mathematics at community meetings where they share their strategies and approaches. They practice using names for numbers, shapes, quantities and attributes.

The preschool classroom is rich in materials that encourage mathematical thinking and curiosity. Students use materials to sort, classify, count, pattern, and grow their spatial awareness. Loose parts, games, unifix cubes, and rekenreks support children visually to develop the skills of early numeracy. Children explore wooden blocks, pattern blocks, geoboards, and magnatiles to discover patterns, attributes and relationships. Sensory materials invite children to fill, scoop, and pour and explore conservation and variables.

Big Ideas in Preschool:

Saying number names up to twenty
Counting with one-to-one correspondence
Understanding that numbers signify a quantity
Using “bigger,” “smaller,” and “the same” to describe differences between collections of objects
Using informal language to describe shapes
Recognizing when a story involves mathematics

Inquiry

Young children are natural researchers. When children arrive in preschool, they build a learning community with their peers and teachers where they get to share their questions and investigate the world through hands-on learning and their imagination. As teachers our intention is to preserve and extend children’s natural learning strategies, nurture their creativity and curiosity, and foster the wonder of learning itself.

Wellness

Preschoolers play outside each day around campus, including on the playground and in the Fir Grove. Twice a week they participate in Wellness class where there is a focus on developing their physical, intellectual, social, and emotional selves. In Wellness, preschoolers learn how to participate cooperatively in physical activities while developing skill, control, and coordination.