Our Nursery program is an intimate and nurturing setting where toddlers, age 3, learn and grow through interactive games, oral stories, read alouds, and creative arts. An English speaking teacher creates a classroom community and routines for a joyful first school experience. The teacher is joined by language specialists (Spanish or Chinese) who provide immersion through music and movement and language games.
We believe that a love of learning is modeled by caring adults who provide multisensory, high interest activities that encourage young children to explore, ask questions and become independent. Our early program is designed to open children’s eyes and ears to the sights and sounds of language and culture. Our music and language teachers are native speakers and highly trained in helping children learn languages in context by engaging them in whole body experiences that promote age appropriate fluency and vocabulary building.
Prepared Environment
In our Early Childhood program, the prepared environment is also a teacher. An aesthetically pleasing, well ordered classroom that allows young children easy access to materials with an expectation that they will also care for materials, is a step towards building independence and security. Our environment includes child-sized furniture, areas for play, real life tasks and child created art on display.
LITERACY
- Identify many upper and lower case letters.
- Develop a love of literature.
- Discuss a text using story grammar (beginning, middle, end, problem, solution), characters, and setting.
- Construct simple sentences which convey meaning.
- Use language to communicate feelings and express ideas and opinions.
- Use symbols/drawings to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas.
- Show beginning control of writing tools.
- Some students will use letter approximation to write short words/ideas.
MATH
- Represent quantities in numeric form.
- Demonstrate basic number sense (Students understand when they see a number/symbol, e.g., ”1”).
- Utilize one-to-one correspondence to 10.
- Organize and express understanding of common properties and attributes.
- Extract information from graphical representations.
- Demonstrate problem-solving skills.
- Recognize explicit mathematical problems.
- Recognize and name basic shapes.
- Rote count to 20.
- Recognize and create a basic A/B pattern.
CHINESE LANGUAGE
- Become familiar with the sounds of the Chinese language.
- Be exposed to new vocabulary/topics related to self, family, school, and feelings.
- Follow basic directions related to daily routines.
- Recognize primary and secondary colors.
- Recognize basic shapes: circle, square, rectangle, and triangle.
- Recognize numbers 1-5.
- Count to 15.
SPANISH LANGUAGE
- Become familiar with the sounds of the Spanish language.
- Be exposed to new vocabulary and topics such as school, family, or feelings.
- Follow basic directions related to daily routines.
- Recognize primary and secondary colors.
- Name basic shapes: circle, square, and triangle.
- Recognize numbers 1-5 (label and 1:1 correspondence).
- Count to 15.
MUSIC
- Create personal movement to music.
- Remember melodies to songs.
- Remember lyrics to songs.
- Keep a beat on a percussive instrument.
- Enjoy music.