There is little difference between the classes. The teaching teams will meet to create streamlined curriculum to meet the needs of the particular children in a class and their developmental needs. Our goal is to prepare all children in the Pre-Kindergarten Program for the kindergarten environment.

While the goal of the program is to prepare the children for kindergarten, Seedlings’ philosophy remains play-based with a focus on emergent, child-centered curriculum throughout all of our classrooms. In the pre-kindergarten program the children take the curriculum to another level because, developmentally, they are ready for more challenging experiences. Our highly skilled teachers offer a positive balance of play and structured curriculum with learning opportunities, experiences and projects when they create their developmentally appropriate lesson plans.

The pre-kindergarten teaching team uses their broad experience and education as well as utilizes recent research from the field to plan a robust curriculum with learning experiences that promote children’s growth across a wide range of developmental and content areas. Our teachers design a daily schedule that maximizes children’s acquisition of desired knowledge and skills through the effective use of time and materials. It allows children to learn through play and structured activities, individually and in groups, according to their developmental needs and interests. The teachers address the following topic areas when planning for the class:

 

• Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Language Development
• Early Literacy
• Early Mathematics
• Science and technology
• Creative expression and appreciation for the arts
• Health and Safety
• Social Studies

In addition, our teachers utilize the Houghton Mifflin Language Arts curriculum for language arts and literacy. This program includes the Alpha Friends curriculum that offers a fun and friendly animal that coordinates with a particular letter. We also offer a mindfulness curriculum through Mindful Life Schools program.

Our environment and curriculum are set up by our early childhood professional teachers to meet the needs of your children. We utilize the California state kindergarten standards as well as guidelines from the National Association for the Education of Young Children to determine best practices in our curriculum.  Here are some examples of how the learning areas are addressed:

• Social and Emotional Development
  • We foster children’s healthy social and emotional growth through the development of friendships, self-regulation skills, empathy, and the ability to resolve conflict in positive ways.
• Physical Development
  • We support children’s large motor development through offering opportunities to develop balance, strength and coordination and to enhance sensory-motor integration.
• Language Development
  • Addresses both verbal and nonverbal communication through opportunities to respond to questions; communicate needs, thoughts and experiences; have discussions; and describe things and events.
• Early Literacy
  • We support early literacy through reading, learning letters and sounds, writing and immersion in a print-rich environment.
• Early Mathematics
  • Addresses the acquisition of early mathematics, including numbers, operations, attributes, geometry, measurement, time, patterns and vocabulary.
• Science and Technology
  • We provide experiences and materials that support children’s scientific inquiry and knowledge through observation, the use of simple tools, representation of findings, and the use of scientific terminology and vocabulary. We further support children’s use of technology that extends learning in the classroom as well as integrates and enriches the curriculum.
• Creative Expression and Appreciation for the Arts
  • We focus on many materials available to children that fosters their expression of and engagement in art, music, dance and dramatic play.
• Health and Safety
  • We offer opportunities to establish and practice habits to promote sound health, nutrition and safety practices.
• Social Studies
  • We offer experiences that foster positive identity and an emerging sense of self and others. We support the children’s understanding of social rules and roles, the local community, their own contributions to the well-being of the social and physical environments in which they live, and diversity around them and in the larger world.

 We feel strongly that you should communicate with your home elementary school about this topic. The age cut off for kindergarten in California is September 1st (it changed to 9/1 in 2014), and many Lamorinda elementary schools are standing strong on that age cutoff. However, we know that each child is unique and we are open to accepting students based on individual needs.