Our Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten program is a unique blend of education philosophies put forth by renowned educationist such as Maria Montessori, Arnold Gesell, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Erick Erickson, Rudolf Steiner, Reggio Emilia, Sugata Mitra – to name a few. Each offer different perspective to early childhood education. We have interwoven the important aspects of these philosophies to create our unique curriculum. We have taken a “child lead approach???, where adult is a mentor and guide. Our role as adults is to observe (our) children, listen to their questions and their stories, find what interests them and then provide them with opportunities to explore those interests further. We have thoroughly incorporate play in every aspect of our teaching – play to learn/learn to play. We teach children to think creatively so that they may succeed in a complex and ever-changing world. Our well balanced curriculum prepares your child for first grade and beyond, with the skills and confidence needed for a lifetime of academic success.
Our curriculum focuses on developing your child’s skill in several areas including language arts and literacy, mathematics, science, social and emotional development, health and nutrition, gross and fine motor development and character building. Our Kindergarten Program is filled with enjoyable activities for your child. Our goal is to help each child succeed to his fullest potential.
This is a child-centered program where we observe the individual and group needs of each child and provide for those needs, their play is their work and this is respected. Free choice of activities within the classroom and group and individual activities are introduced to children.
Our comprehensive, balanced, academically rich kindergarten program helps them to explore, communicate and create, in our rich learning environment. Our unique Montessori based curriculum emphasizes on reading, language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, history and physical education by the use of hands on Montessori materials and our other educational materials present in the classroom.
VARIOUS ACTIVITY CENTERS IN THE CLASSROOM:
OUR INTERACTIVE KINGERGARTEN CURRICULUM FOCUSES ON THE FOLOWING:
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
EMERGENT LITERACY READING:
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS AND READING:
MATH
SCIENCE
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
IMAGINATION AND CREATIVETY
HEALTH, NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION
TECHNOLOGICAL SKILLS
MONTESSORI BASED ACTIVITIES IN THE CLASSROOM
LANGUAGE
Children are introduced to phonetic sounds of the alphabet. Due to the sounds heard in everyday speech, phonetic sounds are taught before the names of the alphabet. This process of phonetic approach using Montessori Method plays an important role in learning how to read at early age. Phonics is introduced through individual and by group lessons by using our sandpaper letters, movable alphabet and by other language activities.
PRINTING EXERCISES
The first pre-writing activities are used to develop and strengthen small muscle coordination through the use of Practical life activities like pouring, spooning, threading, sorting, puzzles, tongs, tweezers work and other exercises. Children wrist and hand muscles refine and prepare your child gain the pincer grasp for holding pencil for writing skills. Our staff encourages our children to write their names, letters and numbers as soon they master their fine motor skills through variety of practical exercises. We teach children to write the lower case letters first as they see lower case more during reading. When printing we emphasize to start at the top of the line and then go to the bottom.
PRE-READING EXERCISES
This includes matching Cards (sets of cards having pairs of various pictures or shapes for the children to match), sequence cards, opposite cards, category cards, rhyming cards and vocabulary cards. The purpose of these matching cards is to develop a visual perception. Children also develop a sense of left to right movement, which indirectly prepares them for reading.
SAND PAPER LETTERS
Our staff introduces Sandpaper letters to our students, Sandpaper letters are so important in helping children to learn their letter sounds, focus is on lower case letters and the sounds they make.
SOUND TABLE
Children are introduced to the letter with objects and picture cards to connect the sound of the letter with words, for example, our teacher show the letter ‘c’ and tell the child the sound of ‘c’, then teacher shows the picture starts with ‘c’ and object starts with ’c’, then child traces over the sandpaper letter ‘c’, and then then teacher reinforces the letter sound by giving 3 period lesson and child traces the letter in a sand tray also. Same way our teacher introduces lower case letters to your child and our staff keep track of the sounds they recognize and those our teacher introduced.
ANIMALS PHONICS
Children are introduced to a set of animal pictures and our staff act out how the animal is represented, for example our staff say’ a’’ a’ “Allie Alligator???, our staff extend arms forward to form an alligator mouth, children enjoy learning these animals characters and enjoy learning sounds by presenting animal pictures. Children enjoy coloring animal pictures with letters also.
METAL INSETS
Children are introduced to metal insets; they are in the form of circle, oval, triangle, square, rectangle, pentagon, quatrefoil and trapezoid. Metal insets helps with the development of mechanical writing. Our staff teaches them how to trace the frame, tracing inside the frame, making overlaps and designs. All exercises help to develop free wrist movement, and prepare our students for writing skills.
WRITING CENTER
Once our children know sounds of the most letters, we encourage them to write the words and letters they have already taught, we provide them with lined and unlined paper, pencils, markers etc. We encourage them to make books, cards etc., we also make an alphabet book to practice handwriting, and we encourage older children to write in a daily journal.
SOUND BOXES
It includes objects and letters, children lay out the letters across their mat and places objects matching to their initial letter sound.
SECOND BOX
Children match pictures to the letter sounds.
FINAL BOX
Children listen for the final sound of the pictures and match it to the letter.
BLENDS
Our teacher introduces the picture blends of 2 consonant sounds together like sn, sw, pl, gr, tr
BLENDING TO MAKE PHONETIC WORDS
Our teacher shows how to make 3 letter words by using sandpaper letters and movable alphabet. Our students take the sandpaper letters and form words like cat, mat, rat, sat, with this child is able to hear and sees the letter to make words. Children are introduced to vowels by matching objects with letter sounds and with the use of Movable Alphabet.
MOVABLE ALPHABET:
With the use of Movable Alphabet, children learn how to make 3 letter-short- vowel, i.e., cat, mat, fat, bat etc. Children learn how to use objects to use make 3 letter words; picture to make 3 letter words. They also use sight words and rhyme words with the use of Rhyme cards and sight cards
Children are encouraged to build a sentence by matching pictures with sentence strips.
Children are introduced concept of singular and Plurals by adding ‘s’ to a word, that means more than one. Once they have mastered the three letter words they move on to make 4 letter words with Movable Alphabet. They are introduced to phonogram with a variety of phonogram cards and with the help of Movable Alphabet… like hatch, batch, fish, shell, shop, each, rich, chat, chop etc.
MONTESSORI BASED ACTIVITIES FOR MATH AREA:
Our Curriculum focuses on math readiness, your child will practice important math skills such as classifying, identifying shapes and numbers and counting. Children develop order, coordination and concentration by the use of Montessori math materials. Our math exercises are divided into 4 groups:
GROUP 1:
Our staff introduces the concept of one through ten through the use of Sand paper Numerals, Counter and Cards, Spindle Box, Number Rods and Short Bead Stairs. Children learn to associate quantity and numbers from one to ten and also counting in sequence from one to ten by the use of these exercises.
GROUP 2:
Our staff introduces the concept of Decimal System by the use of Golden Bead Materials, concrete experience of unit, ten, hundred and thousands are given to children by use of bead materials. Quantity will be followed by symbol and association.
GROUP 3:
Group 3 deals with the operations using the golden bead material. The concept of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are introduced by using Bank Game exercises and stamp game.
GROUP 4:
Group 4 helps with linear counting, counting in sequence from 1 to 100. Quantity is presented using the Teen and Ten Boards followed by symbol and association. Children develop concept of teens also by use of teen board. Children develop number concepts and recognition of numbers one through hundred by using bead chains and one-hundred board. Children are introduced to skip counting, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, etc., by the use of bead chains.
GROUP 5:
Group 5 contains activities such as strip boards, snake game and memorization of facts, children are introduced to concept of fraction by using Fraction skittles and insets.
MONTESSORI BASED CULTURAL ACTIVITIES:
Our Cultural area covers Geography, Science, Botany, Zoology, History, Art and Music. Our curriculum is organized into monthly unit studies in detail to cover all subjects in our cultural curriculum.
GEOGRAPHY:
Our staff introduces the concept of land, water, air, maps, continents, people, food, music from different countries etc. We use of our globe of land and water, world globe, puzzle map of world, puzzle world of continents and by the use of other activities related to Geography.
SCIENCE:
Our staff introduces topics on four seasons, five senses, why leaves change color, layers of earth and parts of volcano etc. and our students enjoy doing simple experiments as well.
ZOOLOGY:
Our staff focuses on animals, vertebrates and invertebrates including insects, worms, spider, butterfly etc. We encourage children to bring classroom pets like hamster, hermit crab, fishes etc.
BOTONY:
Our staff introduces interesting topics like seeds, parts of a plant, kinds of different trees etc.
PRACTICAL LIFE EXERCISES:
Our Practical life activities provide real life experiences for our children; these exercises develop fine and gross motor skills, coordination, concentration and a sense of responsibility.
Our Practical life exercises are divided into 3 areas: care of the person, care of the environment, and grace and courtesy. Children develop skills for zipping, buttoning, snapping and tying by the use of dressing frames. Children are introduced to pouring, spooning, sweeping, folding napkins, sweeping, mopping, taking care of plants and animals etc., these activities develop sense of caring about their environment they live. Exercises to develop Grace and Courtesy consist of how to walk, how to sit properly, greeting others like saying thank you and May I, how to interrupt a teacher or another child by tapping gently on teachers and waiting to be responded to, “ Excuse me???, how to sit on a chair, how to carry a chair, how to pass pointed objects, how to open and close the door, how to control body by playing silence game, how to be polite and respect for each other and walking on line . Our staff demonstrates these exercises during circle time and our staff engages children to repeat these exercises during circle time.
SENSORIAL:
Children refine their five senses through the use of Sensorial Materials, these materials are designed to help the child develop discrimination, order, and to broaden and refine the senses.
Children learn to figure out the difference in dimension, width, length, and size by using Pink Tower, Broad Stairs, Red Rods, and Knobbed Cylinders. Other activity that develops visual sense is by using Color Tablets, Geometric Cabinet, and the Constructive Triangles. Children develop their stereo gnostic sense (tactile-muscular sense) by using Mystery Bag, and through the use of Touch Tablets, Sound Cylinders and Bells, children refine their tactical and auditory sense.
