The Early Childhood Department offers the Creative Curriculum to children ages three through five. The nature of the Creative Curriculum places the child at the center, which allows TRAIL to consistently position the student's strengths and interests at the forefront of the learning experience. No two students are alike, and the School enthusiastically supports and fosters each child’s unique passion. One may be a future mathematician, another a budding artist, and still another a world-class athlete in the making. Throughout the year, the PK3 and PK4 classes explore and discover.
Young children are like little scientists who are continuously exploring the unknown. One major way for them to explore, understand, and relate to the world around them is through play. Play becomes an intricate part of a young child’s development, and the pathway to reach cognitive, social/emotional, physical, and language milestones.
Play is children’s work. Through this work, children learn about who they are and about the world around them. By allowing ample playtime, children use language to engage with friends, inquire about new topics, and explore new materials. These play times throughout the day provide meaningful experiences for building skill sets, thus creating foundations for success in later school experiences. The following are the skills that children develop when engaging with the materials in the learning centers.
Pre-K is an exciting year and the next important step toward becoming readers. Students participate in a variety of activities throughout the day that focus on the organization and basic features of print, offering exposure to emergent phonics and word analysis skills (i.e., letter identification and symbol-sound associations). Ultimately, students will demonstrate an emerging understanding of spoken words, syllables and sounds (phonemes), and display emergent reading behaviors with purpose and understanding (e.g., pretend reading).
The students use writing in a variety of ways. From drawing pictures to forming letters and words, they use their developing fine motor skills to communicate on the page. Students use a combination of drawing, dictating, or writing to express an opinion about a book or topic, to narrate a single event or to provide a reaction to an event. Students are encouraged to respond to questions and suggestions and add details to strengthen illustrations or writing, as needed.
Language skills are an important part of the daily curriculum. The students participate in collaborative conversations about prekindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in both small and large groups. They demonstrate an emergent ability to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas and are encouraged to describe familiar people, places, things, and events, and provide additional detail. Through conversation, a student confirms his or her understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally
through other media. On a daily basis, students are encouraged to ask and answer questions in order to gain information, seek help, or clarify something that is not understood.
Listening skills are a crucial component of early literacy development. Group discussions, read-alouds, and language classes are an integral part of the daily routine. From understanding and following directions to listening respectfully without interrupting others, there are ample opportunities to develop these important skills. Students are encouraged to listen attentively to spoken language (e.g., books read aloud, rhyming words, songs) and to listen for a purpose (e.g., to track individual words as they are spoken or to gain information).
Mathematics in the pre-kindergarten program is an exploration of basic concepts through a wide variety of materials. Math concepts such as numeracy, patterning, geometry, and measurement are interwoven through our play and work. Children gain a deeper understanding of numbers, ways to represent numbers, relationships among numbers, and the number system. They learn to count, quantify, and connect numerals with their quantities (one-to-one correspondence). We scaffold upon the student's ability to recognize patterns and assist them in extending and creating their own color and shape patterns. These pattern skills also help children to understand the beginning principles of addition and subtraction. Data handling skills are introduced by sorting, classifying, and organizing objects by size, number, attributes, and other properties. In addition, we expand upon the children’s ability to understand, explore, and describe geometric shapes and spatial relationships. Children learn to understand directionality, order, and position. The children learn basic knowledge of measurement using an array of manipulatives, such as Unifix cubes, blocks, and traditional measurement tools. Through this experience, they learn to compare and measure everyday objects in their environment.
In music, the pre-kindergarten students focus on musical contrasts such as loud/soft and fast/slow, exploring steady beat, responding to music through movement, and recognizing basic rhythmic music notation. Students are also very involved in instrument exploration and improvisation. Throughout the year, they discover a wide range of classroom instruments with various timbres. Students also sing songs representative of different activities, holidays, and seasons in a variety of cultures.
Physical education classes for students in the pre-kindergarten program reinforce concepts, ideas, terminology, and skills introduced in the 3s program to help build a strong foundation for future years of physical education. Students will continue to explore locomotor and non-locomotor skills; develop the ability to solve tasks individually, in pairs, or in small groups; become aware of some of the elements of a healthy lifestyle; use movement as a way to express themselves; and learn the importance of safety during exercise.
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