Pre-kindergarten Program:

 

Appletree’s Pre-K 4 Voyagers Program provides children ages 4 ½ -5 ½ with all the necessary tools and beyond to begin their journey into kindergarten. The Voyagers’ curriculum prepares our learners by advancing their social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills. Our Pre-K 4 Teachers follow our thoughtfully prepared curriculum to focus on engaging in higher order thinking, developing number sense, cleaning up after themselves and even introducing chapter books.

 

Appletree also aims to:

  • Provide hands-on experiences connected to a variety of activities and subjects, including math, social studies and science
  • Practice reciting, recognizing in print, and writing the upper and lower-case alphabet and numbers (up to 100), shapes and colors as well as beginning and ending consonant sounds and age appropriate sight words
  • Working with partners, in small groups, at cooperative learning, and center-related activities
  • Increasing independence
  • Assigning jobs and tasks to develop responsibility
  • Master proper pencil grip and use of scissors
  • Following multi-step directions with ease

 

Pre-K Developmental Milestones

The list below, although not exhaustive, shows the key abilities and processes Appletree Preschool focuses on for our Pre-K class!

Cognitive Development

  • Understands the idea of “same” or “different”
  • Draws a person with 5 or more body parts
  • Understands the order of daily routines (brushing teeth before going to bed)
  • Follows multi-step directions without confusion
  • Counting and recognizing numbers up to 30
  • Understands the difference between fiction and non-fiction
  • Identifies sequence of events
  • Recite their name, address and phone number
  • Recalls information from stories
  • Asks and answers appropriate questions about stories
  • Connects events, characters, and actions in stories to specific experiences
  • Compares and contrasts
  • Recognizes cause and effect

Physical Development: Large/Gross Motor Skills

  • Accomplishes the skills of running at speed and jumping over objects
  • Manages body movements and build team effort skills through relay running and obstacle courses
  • Catches a ball thrown from a distance of five feet
  • Stands on one foot for ten seconds or longer
  • Moves with balance and control
  • Pedals and steers a tricycle or bike

Physical Development: Small/Fine Motor Skills

  • Develop hand-eye coordination by tracing, drawing shapes, and other manipulatives.
  • Master cutting, gluing, and coloring skills through our daily activities and art
  • projects that become complex over the year
  • Master proper handwriting position through daily handwriting exercises.
  • Dresses and undresses without assistance

Communication and Language Development

  • Comprehends and responds to books and other texts
  • Enhancing vocabulary by learning sight words and practicing sentence structure
  • Sharing ideas and asking questions through Show & Tell
  • Recall a simple story in sequence by listening to a story and repeating back some major points
  • Phonics skills including letter and sound recognition
  • Demonstrates phonemic awareness by noticing rhyme and smaller units of sound
  • Developing early writing skills by writing in journals
  • Demonstrates varied uses of language (e.g., requesting, commenting, using manner words, problem-solving)

Creative Development

  • Explores visual materials and activities
  • Shows care and persistence in a variety of art projects
  • Creates original work
  • Expresses self through movement
  • Demonstrates ability to use movement and music
  • Represents fantasy and real-life experiences through pretend play
  • Participates in teacher-guided dramatic activities
  • Engages in cooperative play with other children
  • Uses oral language to describe or explain art

Science and Social Study Skills

  • Observing life cycles
  • Experimentation with various materials
  • Learns about weather, season, plants, animals, senses, hygiene, nutrition
  • Acquire knowledge of national holidays through books, songs, and other
  • activities
  • Learns about themselves as individuals
  • Learn about the basic elements of community: community helpers and
  • neighborhoods

Mathematical Skills

  • Counting using one to one correspondence
  • Recognize and match objects more than 10
  • Developing and understanding concepts of greater than or less than using concrete objects
  • Basic understanding of addition and subtraction
  • Recognizing, sequencing, and creating patterns
  • Sorting and ordering geometric shapes and objects by color, shape, and size.
  • Represent concrete data by learning how to graph data
  • Understanding and implementing positional words by learning concept of time: before, after
  • Measurement
  • Comprehending the concepts of time including seasons, months and days of the year

PUTTING OUR CHILDREN FIRST