Kindergarten Curriculum
 

Religion Readiness is a vital part of the Catholic School Kindergarten Program. From concrete life experience, the child learns the meaning of love, and being loved, in a family setting. The child realizes that he is special not only in his own family, but in God’s family through Baptism. In a loving atmosphere of security and trust, the child is introduced to the loving goodness of God as shown in the gifts of creation and through His greatest gift, Jesus. By becoming acquainted with the life of Jesus, the child learns more about God and how to respond to His love through following Jesus and by being guided by the Spirit of Love.

Communication Skills are fostered when children have the spontaneity and encouragement to express their ideas verbally through written or picture form; listening to, sharing, and enjoying stories, poetry, and dramatic play. Language is a means of sharing wonder through social patterns based on specific skills: listening, speaking, reading and thinking.

Reading Readiness begins at birth and continues throughout a lifetime. It comes through many informal and planned activities of the family and school environment. Activities such as: field trips, show and tell, and A.V. materials help bring about reading readiness. Other activities are learning left to right, top to bottom progression, eye-hand coordination, recalling stories and happenings in sequence, following directions, perceiving rhyming words, recognizing the alphabet in mixed order along with sounds, and learning to appreciate books through hearing stories read aloud and taking part in picture reading.

Handwriting is not considered a formal learning area in Kindergarten. However, work and play with blocks, clay modeling, finger painting, coloring, and use of scissors build eye-hand coordination which is needed for this later-acquired skill. As children individually evidence a desire to print, they are shown the correct letter forms. The child is encouraged to use his/her natural hand preference for all hand work.

Mathematics Readiness is acquired through informal group activities and planned experiences which occur in games and discovery in working with manipulative activities. Those activities include: rote counting, recognizing and understanding the meaning of the numerals from 1 to 10, learning about comparisons, the calendar, the clock, money, measurement, cluster counting, sets, one-to-one correspondence, equivalence, and geometric shapes.

General Education: other disciplines such as Social Studies, Science, Health, Music, Art and Physical Education are also taught to our children. For more information on these subjects, please contact Ms. Blazys.

* Reading is treated separately from the other communication skills; however, they are all taught together in the Kindergarten Readiness Program (i.e. reading, writing, listening, speaking, and literature appreciation).