(must be three by Sept. 30th)
The PreK 3 program offers three, four, or five days a week options for students. Tuition covers the cost until 12pm. Families may choose the aftercare program from 12pm - 5:30pm.
Three-year-olds can best be described as sunny, silly, and socially aware. They become eager to please and anxious to interact more with those around them. Play activities become much more sophisticated and creative cooperative play becomes the norm with friends becoming important to them. Three-year-olds acquire a vocabulary of over 1,500 words before the end of the year. Their gross motor skills improve greatly; children can run, jump, and balance easily, and they usually learn to pedal tricycles and go upstairs using alternating feet. Their imagination and a sense of humor become evident through their play and more complex social skills. Art activities are a favorite among many three-year-olds helping them develop fine motor skills.
Our program addresses learning in all developmental areas—physical, social, emotional, language and academic. Children develop an understanding of the world around them with content from all disciplines--language arts, math, science, social sciences, art, music, and physical education. They are integrated using themes, projects, play, and other learning experiences. Structured play during center time, large group activities, small group activities, outdoor play, art, math, and language activities, along with enrichments (library, music, art, and P.E.) provide a wide variety of concrete learning experiences to meet the individual needs of each child.
The language arts program includes the development of both receptive and expressive vocabulary, listening and communication skills, appreciation for literature, comprehension and recall of stories, development of print awareness, introduction to letter recognition, recognizing their own names, sequencing skills, position words, opposites, synonyms, auditory discrimination, and visual discrimination. We also subscribe to Clifford Magazine to supplement and reinforce concepts that have been introduced.
The math program includes numeral recognition to the number 10, understanding of number value (the ability to match the quantity with the symbol), one-to-one correspondence, classification, sorting, sequencing, counting, shape recognition and spatial concepts. As well as Handwriting Without Tears math program (I Know My Numbers and Tag Bags).
Gross motor activities focus on developing coordination, strength, endurance, and agility. We focus on skills such as hopping, jumping, balancing, and pedaling that are not only important for creating strong healthy bodies, but are vital to healthy brain development as well. The children ride tricycles, and bouncy balls, climb stairs, slide and swing.
Fine motor activities include any that help control, strengthen, and coordinate the small muscles in the hand, fingers, wrist and shoulders. Our program incorporates Handwriting Without Tears which provides experiences for prewriting and directionality. Manipulative skills such as scissor skills, stringing, painting, drawing, playing with play dough, finger plays and working with small objects, are all vital areas of dexterity development.
In the science program, children learn by exploring their environment and discovering the world around them. The three-year-old program encourages observation and provides opportunities for experimenting, problem solving, and exploring cause and effect as we investigate life science, physical science, and environmental science themes. Examples of our themes are plants, insects, weather, hygiene, and physical changes during cooking. We hatch butterflies from caterpillars, tend to our Pre K3 garden, measure ingredients and cook, as well as other things.
The social living program centers on learning appropriate social behavior, social skills including self-help. Our children will expand their social circles as they learn to share, care, and become aware of others and their feelings.
The religion program is comprised of God Loves Me Storybook series and Read-Aloud Bible Stories that includes weekly age-appropriate chapel services. The service incorporates the use of music, puppetry, and storytelling and is usually led by our music teacher.
Our enrichment programs are designed to further supplement our curriculum. They include art, music, library and physical education.