Pre-School Curriculum

Team teaching in all classrooms helps to differentiate The Country School's preschool from others. A nurturing environment, with a multitude of hands-on experiences, allows children to begin their schooling with enjoyment and strong self-confidence.

Social/Emotional

Social skills are not innate, but learned. During every facet of the preschool program we incorporate important skills that will foster positive social behavior among all the children. We actively encourage the development of problem-solving techniques, which act as guides and role models in most situations. We work on the development of coping skills, which will enable the children to share, wait, make choices and take turns. These skills include impulse control and recognition of consequences for behavior. We constantly promote self-esteem with encouragement and by setting clear and easy-to-understand and follow limits.

This continuous focus on the children's social and emotional development helps them to:

  • Identify their emotions

  • Recognize others' emotions and move towards empathy

  • Interact with others in pro-social ways

  • Express feelings with words rather than through physical aggression

  • Begin playing cooperatively

  • Move towards independence

Art

Art for preschool children is a creative process that allows for choice, exploration, and imaginative expression in a pleasant, support atmosphere. Each child's work should be unique and recognizably different from others.

These process (not product) goals are best reached through traditional preschool techniques such as painting, molding clay, and finger painting. Opportunities for exploring color, line and form and for discovering the effects of various art media on different surfaces in an open-ended fashion allows each child to make a personal statement with art.

Our art curriculum is designed to:

  • Emphasize the process, not the product

  • Encourage creativity

  • Develop a sense of individuality

  • Assist in the development of small and large motor skills

  • Help a child in expressing him/herself in using and manipulating art materials

  • Introduce a wide variety of art materials

  • Explore of a variety of art (clay, watercolors, sand and other mediums)

Science

Our science activities are designed to encourage observation, comparison, exploration, testing, inquiry and problem solving. The children's senses are stimulated while engaged in a wide variety of activities.

Our science curriculum supports the children in:

  • Understanding of the physical world around them

  • Developing concepts of sorting, measuring, and classifying

  • Discovering a science vocabulary

  • Observing similarities, differences and changes

Math (Manipulatives)

The math activities reflect the needs of pre-operational children (still relying on his/her senses to learn about the world, but capable of using symbols) between the ages of 2 and 7 years.

Opportunities are presented that allow children to learn through direct experiences such as sorting, comparing and ordering. Playful lessons develop skills in rote counting, numeral recognition and sets. Again, duplicated sheets (dittos and workbooks) are not utilized in any of the math activities because they are semi-concrete rather than a concrete vehicle for learning.

Our math curriculum is designed to:

  • Assist in developing a mathematical awareness

  • Understand size and seriation

  • Help in learning a mathematical vocabulary

  • Encourage BLOCK play that will lend itself to discussions in length, area, volume, number and shape

Language Arts

Language arts in the preschool curriculum follow a language experience approach. The children's receptive and expressive language is enhanced through the use of finger plays, poetry, discussions, experience charts and creating books.

The primary objectives our language arts curriculum are to:

  • Assist children in their fine motor development

  • Value children's ideas and delight in their use of language

  • Encourage reading and writing as natural extensions of children's desire to communicate in their world

  • Provide accessibility and availability of materials including writing and drawing material at the center

  • Have books readily available for exploring, including wordless pictures books, reference books, story books and children-made books

Dramatic Play

Our dramatic play activities aid children in developing language and spontaneous play. Dramatics can take many forms, such as creative movement or concrete play, using objects as symbols, story dramatization, role-playing and puppetry.

The dramatic play activities are designed to:

  • Assist in the creative and imaginative play

  • Help children in cooperative play

  • Assist children in understanding their world through imitation

  • Increase children's ability to express their feeling through play

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