Preschool Curriculum Curriculum Goals for The Griffin Academy of Westminster School: Three-Year-Old Classes Emotional Growth: Provide a physical environment that is healthy, safe, and nurturing. Provide a loving, welcoming, and joyous atmosphere for the children. Provide an environment of routine and consistency. Provide experiences that will develop qualities of responsibility and independence. Create opportunities for the child to practice sitting still, working independently, concentrating, following directions, and working on a task until its completion. Provide opportunities to develop the child’s imagination through pretend-play, creative story-telling, and art. Social Growth Encourage forming friendships with classmates. Encourage sharing and taking turns. Encourage and model responsibility of caring for one’s own things as well as caring for and maintaining the classroom (simple chores assigned to each child). Encourage child to work cooperatively with others and to begin to understand and respect differences among individuals. Create an environment where conflicts are solved constructively. Create opportunities to practice/promote thoughtfulness and giving. Cognitive Growth: Provide learning activities in language arts: • oral language development; • expressive language; • increasing vocabulary; • pre-writing activities using crayons, pencils, markers, fingerpaints, and paints; • visual discrimination through matching, sequencing activities, and finding hidden objects; • activities for letter and sound recognition; • auditory discrimination through identifying familiar sounds, rhyming. Provide concrete activities in pre-math and reasoning: • classifying, matching, sorting; • patterns and sequencing; • counting; • beginning number recognition; • memory skills. Provide learning activities in science: • caring for the environment and for all living things; • collecting and gathering materials from nature; • simple experiments (such as growing seeds); • activities to improve observation skills. Provide a wide range of art, drama, and music activities. Provide opportunities and encourage self expression through music, movement, art, and drama. Provide exposure to the French language through songs and simple conversation. Physical Growth: Provide opportunities for large muscle development and control. Provide opportunities for small muscle development and control. Provide opportunities to develop balance and coordination, hand-eye coordination, and spatial skills. Encourage good habits of health, hygiene, diet, and safety.   Curriculum Goals for The Griffin Academy of Westminster School: Four-Year-Old Classes Emotional Growth: Provide a physical environment that is healthy, safe, and nurturing. Provide a loving, welcoming, and joyous atmosphere for the children. Provide an environment of routine and consistency. Create an opportunity that encourages discovery and exploration. Create experiences that will increase a sense of competence and pride in accomplishments. Create opportunities that will further develop qualities of responsibility and independence. Provide experiences that will develop the child’s initiative and help him/her to learn to face and resolve conflict or overcome problems. Provide opportunities to develop the child’s imagination through pretend-play, creative story-telling, and art. Social Growth: Encourage social interaction among all classmates. Encourage forming friendships with more than one classmate. Encourage sharing and taking turns. Encourage expressing oneself through verbal expression of feelings and thoughts. Encourage self-reliance and self-control. Encourage and model responsibility of caring for one’s own things as well as caring for and maintaining the classroom (simple chores assigned to each child). Encourage child to work cooperatively with others and to begin to understand and respect differences among individuals. Encourage compliance with rules and following directions. Create an environment where conflicts are solved constructively (via talking through problems and reasoning). Promote and create opportunities to practice thoughtfulness and giving. Cognitive Growth: Provide language-development activities in listening and expressive language. Provide activities to develop pre-reading and reading skills through a phonics-based program: • Alphabet recognition/sound correlation; • Matching of letters, words, and shapes; • Visual discrimination and memory; • Word recognition; • Auditory discrimination and memory. Provide activities to develop pre-writing and fine-motor skills: • tracing activities; • clay, painting and puzzles; • creative story writing. Provide activities to develop beginning math skills: • sorting, matching, and counting objects; • grouping into sets; • recognition and sequencing of numbers; • recognition of shapes; • beginning addition and subtraction skills using math manipulatives. Provide learning activities in science: • caring for the environment and for all living things; • gathering and examining materials from nature; • simple experiments; • activities to improve observation and memory skills. Provide learning activities in social studies: • holidays and historical events during the calendar year; • community helpers; • simple map skills activities. Provide a wide range of art, drama, and music activities. Provide opportunities and encourage self expression through music, movement, art, and drama: • role-playing and make-believe play; • show-and-tell; • acting out stories with puppets and/or props. Provide an environment to begin learning French. Physical Growth: Provide opportunities for large muscle development and control. Provide opportunities for small muscle development and control. Provide opportunities to further develop balance and coordination, hand-eye coordination, and spatial skills. Encourage good habits of health, hygiene, diet, and safety.     Sample of Daily Schedule  This is provided as a general overview of a day at school.  It is not intended to be a set schedule. 7:30 – 8:30 Early morning arrival – individual and/or small group activities 8:30 – 9:00 Morning Group Activities: greeting/welcome, preview of day, attendance, calendar, weather, jobs, discussion, etc. 9:00 – 9:30 Language Arts 9:30 – 9:40 Transition time 9:40 -10:10 Music and Movement (2x per week)/Drama (1x per week)/ French (1x per week)/Art (1x per week) 10:10 -10:25 Morning snack: healthy snack provided by parents on a rotating basis 10:25-10:35 Transition time 10:35 -11:05 Math (3-4x per week)/ Science (1-2x per week) 11:05 -11:15 Transition time 11:15 -11:45 Recess/Play Time: gross muscle activities outside or in the indoor play area 11:45 -12:00 Transition time/restroom break and wash-up for lunch 12:00 End of the Academic Day for the Three-Year-Old Classes Carpool Time for those ending their day at noon 12:00 -12:30 Lunch 12:30 -12:45 Clean-up and transition time 12:45 – 1:45 Nap/Rest Time 1:45 – 2:00 Transition time 2:00-2:30 Free Play 2:30 Academic Day Ends for Four-Year-Olds Carpool Time for those ending their day at 2:30 2:30 – 2:45 Goodbyes, dismissal, and carpool Transition time for those children staying for extended care 2:45 – 3:15 Recess/Play Time: gross muscle activities outside or in the indoor play area 3:15 – 3:30 Restroom break and wash hands 3:30 – 3:45 Afternoon snack: healthy snack provided by the school 3:45 – 3:55 Clean-up and transition time 3:55 – 4:25 Arts and Crafts project: coloring, pasting, playdoh, clay, etc. 4:25 – 4:40 Clean-up and transition time 4:40 – 5:10 Creative Play 5:10 – 5:30 Clean-up, review of the day 5:30 Dismissal and pick-up of all students