|
Junior Kindergarten
Meadowbrook's Junior Kindergarten is a heartwarming environment, as the youngest members of our community are carefully and thoughtfully nurtured as they transition to their lives in academia. The class day is carefully structured to provide engaging projects that support the JK curriculum: development of verbal, mathematical, reasoning, communication, motor and social skills. Each week, we spend time developing all aspects of phonemic awareness, one letter at a time.
The children are encouraged to try a wide variety of academic activities in our room that support the development of verbal, mathematical, motor, and social skills. They enjoy many opportunities for creative expression with blocks, small building materials, dramatic play props, and art media. Our goal is to inspire a love of learning.
Language Arts Through experiences with big books, books on tape, reading readiness workbooks, phonemic awareness games, our daily calendar and schedule, fiction and nonfiction picture books, a print-rich environment, and class created publications, the children begin to develop invaluable language arts skills. The children are exposed to concepts of matching, locating missing items, discriminating letters and numbers, and decoding simple words. Auditory skills of rhyming and letter sounds are developed. As a class, we enjoy creative dramatics and storytelling. Back to Top Mathematics Mathematics is taught using manipulatives, which allows children to develop a strong sense of number. Our math area is an exciting space for discovery where children use a wide variety of manipulative materials, such as Digi-Blocks, Unifix cubes, pegboards, pattern blocks, and geoboards. We explore concepts of patterns, sets, numbers, one to one correspondence, shapes, counting, place value, and simple computation. Children engage in many counting experiences throughout the day. Back to Top Science Our science program encourages the children to use their senses to observe, to question, to wonder, and to hypothesize. We explore a variety of concepts and phenomena, including: magnetism, the seasons, weather, bulb growth, phases of the moon, New England birds, and how animals and people adapt to the weather. Back to Top Social Studies The focus of our social studies program is community. We study our own classroom, the local community, and Native American culture. In addition, Open Circle is a significant part of our social studies curriculum (see below). Back to Top Library In Junior Kindergarten, the children's first library experiences introduce them to books and stories through weekly read-alouds, often combined with puppets, acting, and story-related movement. Students also have the opportunity to look through a carefully selected collection of “early readers” and picture books, as they begin to strengthen an understanding of the connection between the stories they hear and the words on the pages. Back to Top Open Circle The Open Circle curriculum is taught twice weekly. It is a program that recognizes the critical role that relationships play in the academic success of children. The lessons are in three major areas: creating a cooperative classroom, solving interpersonal problems, and building positive relationships.
Back to Top Languages Students begin the study of Spanish in Junior Kindergarten. Students primarily will learn to talk about themselves and their immediate world. Themes will be tied to social studies, science, art and music where appropriate. Some of the themes covered are: - Introduction to Spanish
- Numbers, colors, shapes
- Days, seasons, weather
- All about me: faces and body
- My family
- My house
- Clothing
- Feelings
- My community
|
|
