Early Childhood

Pre-K Curriculum

The Pre-K program includes developmentally appropriate and rich opportunities for engaging in academic readiness activities, creative exploration, socialization, and play. Nurturing physical, cognitive, and social-emotional growth, our Pre-K program fosters the development of the whole child. Through open-ended and structured activities, our Pre-K curriculum is child-centered and is driven by the children’s needs, interests, and levels of development.

Cooperation, sharing, and problem-solving skills are essential to our early childhood curriculum. We recognize that children learn primarily through play and meaningful experiences. Therefore, structured activities are coupled with free exploration at various learning centers. Through these offerings, children make choices, explore materials, and begin to develop critical thinking skills. Initiating and appropriately interacting with peers and teachers is a skill taught and reinforced throughout early childhood.

LANGUAGE ARTS
The four components of the language arts curriculum include pre-reading, pre-writing, listening, and speaking. Pre-reading skills that students develop while in Pre-K include recognizing and writing their name, using illustrations to understand the story, left-to-right reading directionality, recitation and recognition of the alphabet, knowledge of front and back of books, an introduction to authors and illustrators, awareness of beginning sound-letter associations, rhyming, and understanding that a “string” of letters creates a word. Each classroom provides a print-rich environment to foster these skills.

Developing pre-writing skills starts with engaging in activities that enhance fine motor abilities and letter shaping, utilizing diverse materials. As children progress, they learn to construct the alphabet, numbers, their names, and basic words. In Pre-K, 3-year-olds follow the Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum, which involves letter and number writing and shape comprehension. Meanwhile, the 4-year-olds in JK follow the Wilson Fundations program, focusing on recognizing letters, forming them accurately, and developing phonemic awareness. Furthermore, implementing the Heggerty program offers extra opportunities to practice phonemic awareness.

Speaking and listening are key aspects of our Pre-K day. Classroom rules and routines help establish social skills and how to be a productive group member. Through verbal sharing, show and tell, and presenting self-created books, students learn to speak in front of their peers. In addition, they learn how to be an audience member

MATHEMATICS
The focus of the mathematics component is on developing children’s number sense. This is achieved through daily hands-on math encounters. Students use manipulatives to demonstrate one-to-one correspondence to create an awareness of numeration. The three-year-olds are expected to recognize and count from one to 10, and the four-year-olds from one to 20. They also learn to estimate more and less. In Junior Kindergarten, the Everyday Math program is introduced. This program lays the groundwork for future mathematical learning and emphasizes that math is a fundamental part of everyday life.

Geometry work includes free play with patterns and wooden blocks, naming basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle, star, octagon, and geometric solids), recognizing these shapes in everyday objects, and using the shapes in art activities such as collages. Students learn about money through free play in the dramatic play center (i.e., grocery store, restaurant, etc.).

The Pre-K classrooms create classroom graphs based on specific thematic units. Patterning is incorporated throughout the early childhood curriculum. In addition, students learn about calendar, hand-clapping, and counting patterns. Children explore measurement through hands-on activities such as water and sand play, free play with measuring tools, and weighing activities using a balance scale.

SCIENCE
The objective of the science curriculum is to make the environment familiar to children via hands-on explorations of everyday objects. This includes thematic units that may arise from the children’s interests. Examples include weather, seasons, colors, magnets, nature, insects, animals, and the farm. In addition, Pre-K studies the life cycle of apples, pumpkins, and butterflies. Junior Kindergarten also incorporates a “Farm to Table” unit into their science curriculum.

SOCIAL STUDIES
The Social Studies program aims to foster the development of self-awareness in every child. Classroom conversations and interactive tasks center around the child’s individuality, family, school life, local community, and the broader world. Coordinated thematic modules encompass key concepts like The MPA Way (promoting kindness and personal best), the significance of community helpers, an exploration of different countries during Global Week (with each classroom focusing on a different country annually), as well as units on self-discovery with “All About Me” themes and the celebration of diverse cultural and national holidays. Additionally, the program incorporates weekly activities from the Scholastic Magazine to further enrich the learning experience.

WORLD LANGUAGES
The curriculum for World Languages exposes children to Spanish and Mandarin. Our program allows children to explore new sounds and learn basic vocabulary words and short phrases. The goal of this exposure is to inspire a lifelong interest in language learning as well as to integrate essential 21st-century skills in the early childhood program.

Students receive two weekly classroom lessons. Lessons focus on kinesthetic and musical activities such as dance, movement, songs, and rhymes. Many hands-on materials, visuals, and technology engage the students. No written work or homework is intended in this program at this level; instead, the children are encouraged to learn experientially. Core topics covered include greetings and expressions of courtesy, numbers up to twenty, colors and shapes, body parts and cultural celebrations, traditions, and customs. Time permitting, the curriculum may include zoo animals, simple and cultural food, and/or traditional dance.

ART
Young children are primarily process-oriented artists. Multiple opportunities to explore the media are necessary before they can be expected to create a purposeful art piece. Because of this, the preschool art program does not focus on the end product but rather on the process that the child experiences. The children’s drawing, painting, pasting, cutting, tearing, and sculpting skills can be extended to their fullest potential by designing process-oriented art encounters. Furthermore, all artistic endeavors, great or small, are appreciated.

Students use the following media throughout the school year: pencils, markers, crayons, tempera paints, watercolor, clay, pastels, chalk, collage, and play dough.

MUSIC
The music component broadens the children’s exposure to various songs and instruments to increase their appreciation of music. The program aims to help children become confident in expressing themselves and having fun through music. Songs are sung multiple times, and children have free and structured exploration of musical instruments and various sound-makers. Upper School band members visit, introduce, and play their instruments. The children also have the opportunity to create songs and sound-makers.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION
The program emphasizes collaborative skills in early childhood physical education while learning and seeing what each individual can accomplish. Aspects of exploration, creativity, and movement are worked on daily throughout a rigorous curriculum of self-awareness. Problem-based learning is introduced through locomotor (moving from one place to another) and non-locomotor (body movement in place) movement challenges. Basic skills such as throwing, catching, kicking, and tossing are taught. Low organizational games involving these skills are introduced throughout the year. Students learn to work both individually and with partners or small groups. Our emphasis remains on kindness, cooperation, and teamwork.

Kindergarten Curriculum

The Kindergarten program focuses on the development of the whole child (socially, intellectually, physically, creatively, and emotionally). The curriculum is tailored to the students’ varied needs, developmental levels, and interests to provide a positive learning environment that fosters an enthusiastic attitude toward learning.

CHARACTER/SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Social-emotional learning is stressed continually through the Responsive Classroom approach and our Character Education Program. All interactions (child-to-child, child-to-adult) offer opportunities for fostering cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self-control. These positive interactions are emphasized in all settings, including the classroom, centers, transitions, special classes, and recess.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Through the comprehensive, research-based SuperKids program, kindergarteners learn various skills that help develop their reading readiness and reading skills. The students are introduced to various Superkid characters who teach them the literacy skills they need to become fluent readers. Superkids lessons integrate phonemic awareness and phonics skills, reading, spelling, writing, grammar, speaking, and listening.

Literature-based material and texts include interactive read-alouds, informational texts, picture books, emergent readers, leveled readers, and classroom-created books. Through the writing process, students learn to create illustrations, print the alphabet (upper and lowercase), apply letter-sound associations, use transitional spelling, and progress through the stages of writing development. These skills are acquired through the Superkids Reading and Writing program, weekly “Weekend News” writing, daily journal writing, and story response activities. The Superkids program teaches students decoding habits they can use to help them understand the relationship between letters and sounds to blend the letter sounds from left to right to form words.

The language arts curriculum focuses on the four main components of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. All areas are integrated throughout the day, and the value of each component is recognized. When applicable, language arts units are integrated with math, science, and social studies themes.

MATHEMATICS
The mathematical strands stressed through the Everyday Math program include counting and cardinality, operations and algebraic thinking, time, measurement, geometry, attributes, patterns, data and graphing, place value, fractions, and the 100th day of school. Each strand is designed as a spiral that begins at a simple level and grows with the child’s experience. At times, a week-long unit stressing a particular concept is presented. All concepts are introduced, learned, and practiced primarily through hands-on activities rather than rote learning worksheets.

Calendar time is an integral segment of the Everyday Math program. Daily mathematical routines focus on the day, month, year, days of the week, counting forward and backward, place value, patterning, graphing/interpreting weather, compiling data with tally marks, and keeping track of the number of days in school.

The Home Links activities that are periodically sent home enhance the home-school connection by providing students with meaningful, engaging activities to do at home that reinforce what is being taught in school and relate mathematics to everyday life.

SCIENCE
The science curriculum revolves around different topics, sometimes dictated by student interests. There are integrated units that explore topics such as colors, water, trees/leaves/seeds, and animals. Life cycles studied may include apples, pumpkins, and butterflies. These units of study are, at times, coordinated with our Science Spin magazine and reinforced through learning center explorations.

SOCIAL STUDIES
The Social Studies curriculum is designed to help each child develop self-perception. Class discussions and activities revolve around the child, family, school, neighborhood, and world. Integrated units may include Friendship, All About Me, Community, Global Week (country of study varies yearly for each classroom), current events, and various cultural and national holidays. These units of study are, at times, coordinated with our Let’s Find Out newspaper and reinforced through learning center explorations.

CENTERS
Thematic centers often offer exploration and reinforcement of reading, math, science, and social studies lessons. Play-based centers allow students to develop social skills such as sharing, taking turns, cooperation, and collaboration. Classroom centers may include art, writing, dramatic play, science, games, literacy, math, construction, and fine motor.

WORLD LANGUAGES
The curriculum for World Languages exposes children to Spanish and Mandarin. Our program allows children to explore new sounds and learn basic vocabulary words and short phrases. The goal of this exposure is to inspire a lifelong interest in language learning as well as to integrate essential 21st-century skills in the early childhood program.

Students receive four weekly classroom lessons. Lessons focus on communicative, kinesthetic, and musical activities such as skits, dance, movement, songs, and rhymes. Many hands-on materials, visuals, and technology engage the students. No written work or homework is intended in this program at this level; instead, the children are encouraged to learn experientially. Core topics covered include greetings and expressions of courtesy, the alphabet, numbers up to twenty, colors and shapes, body parts, family and cultural celebrations, traditions, and customs. Time permitting, the curriculum may include food and simple weather terminology.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION
The program emphasizes collaborative skills in early childhood physical education while learning and seeing what each individual can accomplish. Aspects of exploration, creativity, and movement are worked on daily throughout a rigorous curriculum of self-awareness. Problem-based learning is introduced through locomotor (moving from one place to another) and non-locomotor (body movement in place) movement challenges. Basic skills such as throwing, catching, kicking, and tossing are taught. Low organizational games involving these skills are slowly introduced throughout the year. Students learn to work both individually and with partners or small groups. Our emphasis remains on kindness, cooperation, and teamwork.

ART
Projects in Kindergarten are geared toward stimulating creative potential and developing visual awareness. Materials such as paper, crayons, chalk, oil pastels, watercolor, tempera, cloth, and two-dimensional projects are used. Basic art elements include color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value. The originality of thought is stressed, and children are aided individually.

MUSIC
In Kindergarten, children focus on recognizing the level difference between the functions of the voice: speaking, singing, whispering, and shouting. The students will begin to learn how to engage the singing voice, eventually becoming comfortable singing alone and within a group.

The children will learn to keep a steady beat when the focus shifts to playing instruments. They will demonstrate proper technique in a broader rhythm instrument collection and apply body percussion rhythms to various classroom instruments. The children will begin to distinguish multiple instruments and voices through recordings and visual aids. They will also continue to create dramatizations and pantomimes applicable to songs while following choreographed movements.

1st Grade Curriculum

READING AND LANGUAGE ARTS
In first grade, the primary emphasis is on linking reading and writing as they relate to the whole child. Using the Zaner Bloser Superkids all-inclusive program, students concentrate on word attack skills with the initial development of vocabulary and comprehension skills, using basal readers, workbooks, children’s literature, and material relating to auditory and visual recall. Students learn to read independently, orally, and strategically.

Superkids incorporates phonics, reading, and writing. The program includes the development of sentence structure using capital letters, punctuation, and the use of capital letters for proper nouns. Initial instruction is given in basic language usage concepts: sentence structure, plurals, possessives, and describing words (adjectives, adverbs). The primary purpose of language arts is to communicate effectively, recognize word patterns, and write stories with a focus.

Writing activities allow the children to utilize and apply these skills. Personal and imaginative experiences and literature-based topics enable students to express their ideas. Penmanship skills are taught and reinforced during the year. Spelling words and grammar exercises are emphasized throughout the whole language program. Real-life experiences are shared through weekly journal writing.

MATHEMATICS
Mathematics students build mastery and confidence in basic skills through a spiraling curriculum, Everyday Mathematics. In first grade, they learn the basics of numeration and counting, explore using a calculator, and understand money and its value. Students learn basic addition and subtraction. Problem-solving skills are developed throughout the course, and students learn to order and sequence data that they have recorded and display data using graphs. Foundational skills in geometry with 2D and 3D shapes are explored, as are skills in estimating, measuring, comparing, and recognizing patterns.

SCIENCE AND HEALTH
Through discussion and simple experiments, first grade students explore various topics using the Scholastic News magazine. Skills stressed include communication, observation, gathering data, making inferences and conclusions, classification, and experimentation.

Students learn about bats, birds, and chickens and their life cycle in the life science units. For earth science, students explore the themes of weather and the seasons. During the units on health, students learn about nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.

SOCIAL STUDIES
Our Scholastic News publication connects students to current events, people in the news, and world problems are emphasized weekly.

The first grade social studies curriculum focuses on the relationships of individuals with their families, communities, and cultures. We celebrate diversity and recognize patterns that exist throughout diverse cultures. During Global Week, we focus on learning about one specific country. On International Day, students enjoy various ethnic foods as part of our celebration.

They also learn about the many contributions of important people during Black History Month and Women’s History Month, along with influential people in today’s society, such as our U.S. Presidents during election years.

The overarching goal of our Responsive Classroom framework is to develop students’ self-concept while learning to have positive and caring interactions with others.

WORLD LANGUAGES
The curriculum for World Languages exposes children to Spanish and Mandarin. Our program allows children to explore new sounds and learn basic vocabulary words and short phrases. The goal of this exposure is to inspire a lifelong interest in language learning as well as to integrate essential 21st-century skills in the early childhood program.

Students receive five weekly classroom lessons. Lessons focus on communicative, kinesthetic, and musical activities such as skits, dance, movement, songs, and rhymes. Many hands-on materials, visuals, and technology engage the students. Very minimal written work or homework is intended in this program at this level; instead, the children are encouraged to learn experientially. Core topics covered include a review and expansion of previous core topics as well as classroom expressions, numbers up to 50, pets, school and classroom objects, and cultural traditions, celebrations, and customs. Time permitting, the curriculum may include the calendar, weather, emotions and/or relevant idiomatic expressions.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION
The program incorporates cooperative skills in early childhood physical education while learning and seeing what each individual can accomplish. Aspects of exploration, creativity, and movement are worked on daily throughout a rigorous curriculum of self-awareness. Problem-based learning is introduced through locomotor (moving from one place to another) and non-locomotor (body movement in place) movement challenges. Basic skills such as throwing, catching, kicking, and tossing are introduced. Low organizational games involving these skills are slowly introduced throughout the year. Students learn to work both individually and with partners or small groups. Our emphasis remains on kindness, cooperation, and teamwork.

ART
Projects in 1st grade are geared toward stimulating creative potential and developing visual awareness. Various materials are used, such as paper, crayons, chalk, oil pastels, watercolor, tempera, cloth, yarn, and two-dimensional projects. Basic art elements include color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value. The originality of thought is stressed, and children are aided individually.

MUSIC
Children will begin to move from one vocal function to another. They will start to recognize when the singing voice is engaged. First graders will identify basic instrument groups (wood, metal, “skins”). They will also identify various non-pitched and pitched percussion instruments by name. The children will demonstrate appropriate playing techniques on various classroom instruments, accurately echo rhythmic patterns using body percussion and standard body percussion instruments, and discover and maintain a steady beat on instruments when listening to or singing songs. They will decipher that a beat is different from a rhythm. The children will understand that some rhythm patterns are long and some are short, and melodies move high/low and up/down. They will begin to learn mallet techniques while learning the different forms of music. Finally, first grade will become comfortable singing and playing in an ensemble with additional musical activities coinciding with unison singing.