Pre-K 3


Pre-K 4


Kindergarten


Kindergarten

Our kindergartners will use the Reading Street Common Core curriculum. Long respected by teachers nationally, this curriculum helps build and assess children’s cognitive skills, alphabet knowledge and social-emotional development. Reading Street curriculum prepares kindergarteners for first grade by maintaining high reading levels. This curriculum allows us to prepare your child for the high standards in the district.

Reading Street Common Core Curriculum helps students prioritize instruction to support higher levels of reading and writing. It also:

  • Increases text complexity in reading
  • Provides accessible rigor
  • Balances fiction and informational texts
  • Builds content-area knowledge
  • Emphasizes close reading
  • Focuses on informative/explanatory, argumentative/opinion and narrative writing
  • Implements performance assessments
  • Integrates media and 21st century skills

Our kindergarten students will also use enVisionMATH. The enVisionMATH Common Core curriculum was built from the ground up to meet the Common Core State Standards. Mathematical practices are deeply rooted in the curriculum. These practices promote student success in mathematics and will prepare kindergarteners for first grade.


Pre-K3

Mother Goose Time

Mother Goose Time uniquely weaves 33 research-based skills through monthly activities and discovery projects. As children participate in Mother Goose Time, they are naturally exposed to skills which support their on-going social-emotional, physical, language and cognitive development. These skills, when combined with a nurturing environment, intentional teaching practices, and meaningful relationships support a child’s school readiness.


Pre-K4

Our pre-k 4 students will follow the comprehensive pre-K curriculum Opening the World of Learning (OWL). OWL prepares children for kindergarten with ongoing assessment of research-based success predictors and playful, purposeful and personalized instruction. The OWL curriculum is designed to develop oral language and early literacy skills for pre-k children.

The content of each unit is built around a carefully crafted daily routine familiar to all Pre-K teachers and caregivers. Themes, skills, and concepts are developed through quality children’s fiction and nonfiction trade book classics. The consistent format and features in every unit makes it easy for teachers to use and children to learn.

The At-A-Glance Weekly Planner breaks each full day into appropriate blocks of learning time, along with a half-day option.

Center Time provides plans for setting up and orienting children to self-selected activities in which they explore, experiment, deepen their understanding of new concepts, and practice budding skills. Conversation tips for developing language in the context of centers are included.

Small Groups provide three small group activities each day to address math, writing, language and print manipulative, science, and book browsing. A tab indicates the amount of teacher support required, and each activity includes suggestions for meeting the needs of ELL students, children needing additional challenge, or children requiring social or emotional support.

Conversations With Children help teachers use opportunities for informational conversation with children to develop children’s language, social skills, and concept knowledge. These pages include models for literacy-related conversations to use during mealtimes and times of transition.

Story Time guides teachers as the class reads and discusses one or two trade books. (Each book is read four times over a period of time, advancing from an initial sense of story and vocabulary to active interaction with the text.) Teachers view useful notes on purpose and standards, strategies for reading aloud, key vocabulary with simple definitions, ELL and other adaptations, progress monitoring, and suggested conversations to model successful reading.

Songs, Word Play, Letters build children’s phonological awareness, alphabet letter knowledge, and vocabulary with fun literacy circle activities.

Let’s Find Out About It builds students’ background knowledge using information from nonfiction texts and hands-on experiences. Let’s Talk About It, an alternating feature, addresses topics of social and emotional importance to children and teachers.

In addition, End-of-the-Day Centers promote conversation that develops language at the end of the day’s learning, and Connect With Families suggests family activities that develop oral language and literacy.

 


Our STEM Program

A key goal of Paige & Paxton is to expose children to STEM careers as early as possible. Children are already thinking about who they are and how they fit into the world around them. They aspire to be firefighters, police officers, entertainers, doctors, fairy princesses, and superheroes. So why not botanists, chemists, computer programmers, mathematicians and structural engineers? The adults around children often ask them: What do you want to be when you grow up? Consider that children’s answers to this question have not changed much over the last decade. Even more profound, their answers do not change much as they progress through high school and college. When young adults were asked their reason for not pursuing a career in STEM, 34% responded that they did not know much about STEM fields!

Paige & Paxton necessarily has a robust, inquiry-based component that allows children to engage in open-ended exploration. In addition to hands-on challenges and projects, Paige & Paxton programming goes one step further: rather than just a litany of projects that create “cool” structures, explosions, and yucky experiments, Paige & Paxton provides context and real-world relevance through the lens of the child.


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