• Kindergarten Language Arts

    The Kindergarten Language Arts curriculum explicit instruction in the Magic Penny Reading Program, a phonics-based program that provides explicit, sequential, and systematic instruction in letter and sound recognition and isolation to help prepare students with the foundational skills necessary for blossoming readers. Specific instruction at the kindergarten level provides children practice in basic reading readiness skills such as letter identification, letter sounds, beginning, middle, and ending sounds, word formation, rhyming words, and story comprehension and sequencing.

    In addition, our district uses the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum to help students develop their fine motor skills and become proficient writers. Handwriting Without Tears® has a proven success rate in helping young children make legible and fluent handwriting an easy and automatic skill for all students. Created by Jan Olsen in 1977, who used her occupational therapy training and background to develop strategies to facilitate handwriting, HWT is easy to learn, easy to teach, developmentally appropriate, and uses fun, entertaining, and educationally sound instructional methods to teach handwriting to all students: pre-k through cursive.

    Kindergarten Math

    The Math curriculum is a hands-on, process oriented curriculum. The lessons are typically taught as a whole group and then allow children the opportunity to explore, manipulate objects, and to play games with a partner or small group. The program focuses on “how” children arrive at a solution and promotes different problem solving strategies. A main focus in kindergarten is counting; counting is the basis for understanding the number system.
    Some areas that Kindergartners will explore:
    -Counting

    -Basic number systems (sequencing, addition/subtraction)

    -Sorting by size, shape, and different attributes

    -Patterns

    -Measurement

    -Collecting Data and Graphing (surveys, sorting, classifying, and interpreting
    data)
     
    Kindergarten Science/Social Studies
     

    The kindergarten Science and Social Studies curricula include topics that are visited repeatedly throughout the year in a variety of ways, from read alouds, to centers, to hands-on opportunities to explore materials and concepts.

    Some of our units include:
    Science Social Studies
    -Animal Studies -Me, Myself, and Others
    -Marine Life -My Family
    -Weather -Community Helpers
    -Seasons -Different Holidays
    -Plant Studies -Character Education Traits
    -Sequence of Events -Homes and Families
    -5 Senses -Fire Safety
    -Dental Hygiene -Martin Luther King, Jr.