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PRESCHOOL PROGRAM

Dinky’s preschool curriculum helps children achieve school readiness in all areas of academic and social learning.

Our READY for SCHOOL preschool program is filled with investigation, exploration, and discovery, where active and enthusiastic children can refine and expand their skills and knowledge. Through intentional teaching practices, purposefully-designed learning environments, and enriched activities, teachers ensure preschoolers have joyful, appropriate, and meaningful learning experiences that lead to success in school and in life.

Our Macmillan/McGraw-Hill & Creative curriculum aligns preschool program goals and practices with families' expectations of educational excellence, helping young learners grow into confident students.

PRESCHOOL CURRICULUM FOR SCHOOL READINESS

Our curriculum creates a developmentally appropriate learning environment that empowers preschool children to be confident, successful, lifelong learners.

Literacy:  Fostering and challenging preschoolers’ language and literacy development.

Vocabulary expands from a few hundred words to a few thousand and word comprehension takes off during the preschool years. Our preschool programs and curriculum provide children with opportunities to integrate listening, speaking, early reading, and writing into daily activities such as:

• Recognizing letters and discriminating between sounds
• Answering open-ended questions such as "What do you think?"
• Participating in projects that have multiple steps
• Playing language and rhyming games
• Following along in children’s books read to the class
• Dictating thoughts and ideas to teachers about artwork

MATH: Building mathematical skills to help preschoolers solve everyday problems.

Whether they are counting how many marbles they have, fitting a cylinder into a circular hole, or asking for more milk, preschoolers are constantly using and experimenting with math concepts. Our preschool teachers create learning experiences that build math skills and reasoning so children can solve problems and use mathematics in real and meaningful ways, such as:

• Sorting items by size, color, or shape during clean-up
• Stringing beads in a pattern
• Discussing past, present, and future events
• Counting out small groups of items and matching to a numeral card
• Playing estimation games such as "Which jar has more pebbles?"
• Experimenting with measuring cups in the sand or water table

SCIENCE: Encouraging preschoolers’ curiosity and inquisitive approach to science.

Preschool children are constantly engaged in research and experimentation, testing hypotheses, exploring properties, making important discoveries and learning how things work. Through our preschool science curriculum, teachers carefully plan experiences that not only develop scientific skills but also nurture children’s natural curiosity, such as:

• Investigating objects on a light box or light table
• Predicting daily weather
• Using microscopes and documenting observations through pictures and charts
• Problem solving with the guidance of teacher prompts
• Exploring maps, magazines, and other resources

ART: Developing preschoolers' appreciation of the arts through self-expression.

Artistic exploration encourages important skills such as creative thinking, adaptation, problem-solving, innovation, and follow-through. Our preschool teacher’s nurture children’s own artistic abilities and help them appreciate art in the broader world by engaging in diverse creative experiences, such as:

• Working on long-term art projects such as paper-Mache sculptures
• Dictating stories to accompany drawings
• Singing songs and reading books from around the world
• Making instruments
• Painting to the beat of music
• Creating dramatic play areas such as a greenhouse, grocery store, or office

The WORLD & Me: Enhancing preschoolers’ sense of responsibility and compassion.

Preschoolers are actively developing their sense of self and who they are in the world. Our preschool teachers create respectful and diverse learning environments, helping children understand the world they inhabit. Teachers also present unique experiences for children, enhancing a preschooler's sense of responsibility and compassion for people, such as:

• Sharing cultural and family traditions with the class
• Working with peers on community service projects
• Experiencing the comforting words and gestures of teachers and peers
• Exploring photos of children and adults who are similar or different from us
• Playing collaboratively with peers
• Caring for classroom plants

health AWAREness: Developing the knowledge and skills to practice healthy lifelong habits.

Because young children are forming attitudes and behaviors that will influence them throughout their lives, it is important to expose them to experiences that foster their ability to make good health decisions, develop a positive self-image, make healthy nutrition choices, and show respect for their bodies. At Dinky’s, our preschool teachers provide children with varied opportunities and materials geared towards developing healthy lifelong habits, such as:

• Making their own choices at snacks and meals
• Identifying nutritious foods and how they help our bodies grow
• Taking responsibility for his/her own basic hygiene such as proper hand washing and covering his/her coughs
• Engaging in physical activities - hopping, climbing, yoga
• Following procedures for a fire drill