Educational Milestones
Two year old room
The two year old’s are introduced to colors, shapes, counting to 10, letters and phonetic sounds, traditional poems, and nursery rhymes.
We also teach stories incorporating social and emotional elements. Children begin their “playing” by side-by-side play or parallel play. As a rule, they do not play together yet. Some of the developmental milestones we teach are learning names, how to dress, how to help, and manners.
Since potty training is a part of our 2-year-old classroom, we schedule potty breaks throughout the day and partner with the parents to help them along the way.
The 2-year-olds (AS all ages do) will have morning and afternoon recess outside, as well as free play/centers at different times of the day. Children learn how to share and acts of empathy and caring become evident
The Three-year-old room
The 3-year-olds are introduced to colors, a letter of the week, numbers, and basic math skills. These skills include shapes, sorting, spatial concepts, and patterns. They will also begin their pre-writing skills through tactile letters and numbers. We teach key children’s stories and songs. and learn rhymes and poems to develop the child's pre-reading skills. This age group begins to play together not just side by side as when younger.
We do weekly activities to improve fine and gross motor skills and tracing their names. In addition, they begin to learn how to cut, holding crayons, pencils, and markets.
They participate heavily as a rule with dress-up/dramatic play. At First School, we believe in a balance of play-based and academic learning.
Reading, being read to and self-reading begins in earnest and is a loved activity throughout the day.
Four year old room
The goal of the 4-year-old classroom is to get them ready for Kindergarten. They begin to have friend groups and learn about social interactions and social-emotional work continues.
The 4-year-olds learn phonics and literacy, math, and STEAM activities. They start out every morning with “check-in” by a tracing activity of their names., circle time which includes going over the calendar (days of the week, months of the year, weather), and class discussions.
Share day is just one of many special events that occur; they begin to get comfortable speaking and instill self-confidence. The children focus on a letter per week and begin to distinguish the difference between upper and lowercase letters and practice writing them.
In math, the children learn to sort by size, shape, and color. They compare and contrast, create patterns and graphs, and practice recognizing, writing, and counting numbers 1-30.
With STEAM, the children will have fun, hands-on projects where they learn through observation, experimentation, and play
Five year old room
The 5-year-old classroom builds upon the work in the TK (transitional kindergarten)/4-year-old) classroom. The learning becomes more proactive and the friendships more important. Most 5-year-olds are in kindergarten and the aftercare program we have helps them with what they learned that day in school
We spend time with outside activities and sports as their bodies are starting to grow and coordination is challenging.