Pre-K Curriculum | Bright Beginnings Preschool

Social and Emotional Skills

  • Dear Bright Beginnings Staff, Thank you for everything you did to make school a welcoming and happy environment for my granddaughter, She is going to public kindergarten now and we know she will enjoy it.

    - Joyce Lawrence, Annabel's Grandma (Pre-K)
  • Bright Beginnings was welcoming right from the start. We moved from Houston and didn’t know where we would have Jadon go. The instant I walked into Bright Beginnings, I knew it would be a good fit. Jadon will miss all of his friends and especially Miss Summer. Thank you for being so warm and welcoming. Jadon has loved it here!

    - Shauna Bass, Jadon's Mama (Pre-K)
  • We have absolutely loved sending Will to school at Bright Beginnings. We are sad that he is graduating, but he is well-prepared for kindergarten.

    - Lindsey Hayes, Will's Mama (Pre-K)
  • Our daughter comes home bright-eyed and excited daily about what she’s learned and is sad not to go to school on the weekends.

    - Rodrigo & Sarah Cazorla, Natalia's Parents (Pre-K)
  • After more than four years at Bright Beginnings, leaving is bittersweet. Our son is more than ready to transition to elementary school, but we will miss our school family. Thank you for loving Luke and teaching him more than we ever would have ourselves. Thank you for keeping him safe and guiding him each day. We are beyond grateful for the BB staff!

    - Janelle Gorski, Luke's Mama (Pre-K)
  • Thank you all so much for taking care and instilling such wonderful manners, values, and experiences for Jonathan. He really took off in the last few months when he was in Miss Teena’s room, and we are so very grateful. It truly takes a village to raise a child. We are so lucky to have had the Bright Beginnings team as part of our family village!

    - Marianne Varner, Jonathan's Mama (Pre-K)
  • We have had an amazing experience at Bright Beginnings and feel that Beck has been loved, nurtured, and shaped to be a productive kindergartner. From the moment we stepped into the school we were met with so much warmth. We have never regretted our decision to place Breck here. His teachers have been amazing and will be truly missed. We can’t thank you enough for making this such a wonderful experience for Beck and our family.

    - Marian and Danny Raible, Beck's Parents (Pre-K)
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Children will develop autonomy and a confidence to experience new social situations by learning to:
  • Share
  • Take turns
  • Give and take in conversation
  • Ask for help and help others; Power Words
  • See self as important part of classroom group; assist with developing class constitution
  • Respect, tolerate and understand differences between self and others
  • Celebrate differences and unique gifts of self and others
  • Express feelings and ideas, listens to feelings and ideas
  • Develop empathy skills
  • Learn to take responsibility
  • Cooperate with others and accept limits
  • Learn self control and accept logical consequences
  • Develop self-esteem, positive sense of self, confidence
  • Practice solving problems alone and with peers, teachers
  • Practice being a leader and a follower
  • Participate in classroom decisions and actively give opinion
  • Develop pride in work displayed
  • See self and others with separate and unique skills

"Both of my boys love Bright Beginnings and their teachers. I love it because they learn so much." -Kathy Sletten

Self Help and Personal Responsibility

  • Becoming comfortable with classroom routine and schedule
  • Being comfortable asking for help from the teacher
  • Practicing hand washing and bathroom hygiene
  • Dressing self including shoes, socks and outerwear, hats, mittens
  • Locating and caring for belongings
  • Setting goals and celebrating achievements
  • Sharing the teacher’s time with classmates
  • Serving self and peers snacks and drinks
  • Experiences the local community through field trips
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Fine Motor Skills

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  • Strengthen eye-hand coordination
  • Strengthen pincher grip (puzzles, play dough)
  • Develop muscles necessary for writing
  • Gain self-awareness and confidence through practice
  • Express self using variety of art mediums, writing tools
  • Develop coordination needed to perform self-help skills (dressing, shoes, laces and velcro, buttons and zippers, turning on water, opening doors)
  • Easel painting to classical music

Gross Motor Skills

  • Develop body awareness
  • Develop sense of body control
  • Practice balance (stand on one foot, yoga, dancing)
  • Build ball skills (roll, throw, catch, bounce, pass, dribble)
  • Practice age appropriate group games (parachute, Duck, Duck Goose, bean bag toss, soccer)
  • Move body in different ways (skip, hop, jump, gallop, run, sun sideways, crisscross, backwards, upside down)
  • Build muscle tone
  • Build endurance
  • Build fitness ability; agility, strength, cardio
  • Understand health benefits of physical fitness
  • Understand fitness as a social and group activity
  • Understand holistic approach to health (fitness, nutrition, relaxation)
  • Group cooperative games
  • Sand and water play
  • Climbing
  • Swinging
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Literacy skills

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  • Develop a love of reading and a respect for books
  • Be introduced to classic and modern children’s literature
  • Be introduced to a variety of genres: picture books, concept books, alphabet and counting books, realistic books, fantasy books, biographies
  • Memorize predictable pattern books
  • Explore authors through exposure to complete works
  • Associate reading with learning, imagination, wonder, pleasure
  • Learn book parts: cover, pages, binding, title page
  • Understand author role
  • Understand illustrator role
  • Learn parts of story: beginning, middle, end
  • Learn story elements: characters, plot, setting, and theme
  • Recreate stories using circle stories, murals, sentence strips
  • Practice predicting what happens next
  • Practice repeating words and phrases
  • Play act out stories and simple skits
  • Imagine different endings
  • Learn book care
  • Learn library etiquette
  • Recall events from story, sequence of events
  • Become familiar with layout of a book (front to back, top to bottom and reading left to right)
  • Learns that one reads words not pictures, pictures provide contextual cues
  • Gain ability to comprehend story from looking/listening to picture books and listening to book on cd/teacher reading without visual cues (chapter books)
  • Poetry
  • Puppets

Language Arts

Children will become future storytellers, poets and journalists by:
  • Recognize letters
  • Associate letters with sounds
  • Letter banks
  • Recognize name, classmate’s names
  • Simple sight word recognition (Dolch list, names, classroom areas)
  • Word banks
  • Enjoy Mother Goose nursery rhymes
  • Letter-sound associations including recognize beginning and ending sounds
  • Simple rhyming words
  • Writing own stories
  • Participating in group or peer written stories
  • Recitation (memorizing and performing simple poems, nursery rhymes)
  • Learn finger plays and songs
  • Writing letters and words (play dough, salt and cornmeal trays, child markers and crayons, pencil)

Reading Skills

Children will gain knowledge needed to become a life long learner by:
  • Introduction to phonics
  • Introduction to inventive spelling
  • Introduction to decoding
  • Whole Language Approach
  • Word study
  • Left to right reading progression
  • Point to word with finger (tracking)
  • Introduction to poetry
  • Language Experience Approach (LEA)
  • PALS Assessment (Pre K)
  • Identify environmental print (classroom labels, street and traffic signs, familiar logos and restaurant signs)

Analytical Skills

Children will ask questions and seek answers by:
  • Explore picture sorts
  • Gain competence with puzzles
  • Experience simple keyboards and appropriate computer skills
  • Solve simple riddles and story problems
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Mathematics Skills

Children will become deep thinkers and problem solvers by:
  • Introduced to Math Their Way (hands on, sequenced learning)
  • Free explore math manipulative materials
  • Patterning with manipulatives and real objects
  • Sorting
  • Counting forwards and backwards
  • Concept of number, number sense
  • Classifying
  • Graphing
  • Measurement
  • Math vocabulary such as opposite, backward
  • Math predicting
  • Real life math problems in the classroom
  • Colors and shapes
  • Picture and object sorts
  • Blocks and puzzles
  • Sensory exploration including water play, rice and beans, cornmeal, salt and noodles- pouring, funnels, measuring, stirring, scooping

Fine Arts

Children will be encouraged to develop appreciation for creative expression and understand its benefit as a tool of self-expression by:
  • Opportunities to speak in front of peers
  • Being introduced to a variety of appropriate music genres
  • Learning music concepts such as rhythm, beat, lyrics, tune
  • Learning and singing choral music and performing for parents
  • Dress up including encouraging non-gender bias
  • Role-playing
  • Playing musical instruments
  • Musical games
  • Create visual art while listening to different music genres
  • Sing alongs with other classrooms
  • Dancing
  • Body awareness games

Science

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Children will become inquisitive and curious learners by:
  • Experience real life science lab experiments
  • Make predictions
  • Ask questions to form a hypothesis
  • Curriculum content includes physical, earth, life and environmental science topics
  • Seasonal nature activities
  • Outdoor classroom learning
  • Collecting and graphing data
  • Making predictions

Social Studies

Children will become future leaders and activists by:
  • Appreciate cultural and social diversity
  • Study community helpers
  • Historical figures
  • National Holidays
  • My Family
  • My Community
  • My School Community
  • Concept of now and then/before and after/timelines
  • Monthly concepts and related field trips and school guests
  • Seasonal and holiday festivals and traditions
  • School community celebrations

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Nutrition

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A pepper from our Mill Creek Garden. Each school has their own garden!

Children will learn healthy eating and drinking habits relate to overall lifelong health, fitness and happiness by:
  • Allowing parents to send in lunches and snacks if desired to address allergies, food habits, religious and nutrition requirements
  • Eating healthy school lunches and snacks
  • Cooking projects use fresh ingredients, organic when possible
  • Encouraging healthy choices of fresh, organic ingredients
  • On site gardens allow children to understand eating local and fresh

Art History

Children will look at the present through art from the past helps cultivate a climate of appreciation of diverse contributions by:
  • Discovering famous artists and their works
  • Relating art to literacy- art tells a story
  • Developing imagination through seeing an art piece
  • Recreating art styles (collage, pointillism, watercolors, charcoal)
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Manners and Etiquette

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Our Forest Lakes kids showing off their manners on a manners field trip out to eat!

Children will be comfortable in a changing global world starting within the classroom by:
  • Learning basic courtesy such as please, thank you, excuse me
  • Waiting until all are served to eat
  • Hello and goodbye greetings
  • Making introductions and making guests feel welcome
  • Knowing what makes a friend and being a friend
  • Caring for work space and classroom and playground clean up
  • Positive conflict resolution within peer groups

Child Safety Skills

Children will acquire age appropriate skills to learn how to stay safe and be confident in a world outside of the home by:
  • Know first and last name
  • Know address, parent’s cell numbers
  • Stranger danger
  • Fire safety
  • Car safety
  • Sun safety
  • Playground, park and pool safety
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