Kindergarten

                                           

Teacher (morning) - Miss Barb Merten          Teacher (afternoon) - Mrs. Sonja Genke  Prinicipal

The program in Kindergarten seeks to provide age-appropriate experiences that fully develop a student's God-given potential in an atmosphere that promotes spiritual growth and a positive self-concept. The schedule features daily routines with structured large group lessons. Small-group learning and free-choice activities provide for development of students' social interactions and promote cooperation. Students learn standard-based concepts and do skills-based activities using fun and creative themes. While planned activities cover all of the core curriculum areas, the students' faith life, pre-reading/reading skills and a solid math foundation are the most prominent.

                      

Multiple Open House opportunities, Parent/Teacher conferences and weekly newsletters develop a cooperative link between home and classroom.                                       

Curriculum

• Religion - The Voyages curriculum emphasizes Jesus' love for each student. This focus incorporates God's love for us as shown in His plan for our salvation. The Bible stories are enhanced through chapel, worship, songs, puppets, books, finger plays, and weekly memory work.
• Reading & Language Development - We use the Houghton Miffilin curriculum, which is a print-rich activity-based curriculum the nurtures emergent literacy, phonics skills, and emergent writing. It utilizes a variety of literature and encourages journal writing.
• Social Studies - Starts to establish children's identity and how they relate to the world, explores how people fulfill their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter, also exploring the concept of place and time.
• Phonics - Fostering strong phonemic awareness, this curriculum provides take home books and easy ready classroom books. High-frequency sight words and handwriting activities are also practiced.
• Mathematics - The math curriculum focuses on patterns, graphs, measurement, number sense, time, money, addition, subtraction, solids, shapes and problem solving. Hands-on manipulatives and learning games enhance the key concepts of numeration (counting), measurement, shapes, operations and functions, estimating and graphing, time, money, and data organization.
• Computer - Students reinforce basic math and reading skills using a variety of educational software such as Jump Start Kindergarten. Students practice mouse control and begin using the keyboard with Paint and Word.
• Art, Music, P.E. & Choir - These areas of learning promote the child's awareness of cultural and aesthetic value in the fine arts as well as development of fine and gross motor skills.
• Handwriting Without Tears - Good handwriting is one of the foundation skills of language development.  Handwriting without tears is a curriculum that gives multisensory techniques to engage students so they can focus on the content of their writing rather than the mechanics of letter and number formation.  As the children gain handwriting mastery, their writing becomes more fluid and automatic.  This curriculum is a great tool for teaching posture, paper and pencil skills. Our goal is for the children to learn proper handwriting habits and then apply those habits to writing experiences.  Handwriting Without Tears focuses on the correct formation and orientation of letters and numbers.  Strokes are made with correct sequence.