Pre-K Curriculum
Social and Emotional Skills
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
Fine Motor Skills
- 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
Literacy skills
- 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
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
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
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)
Manners and Etiquette
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
