incorporates many activities and opportunities to work on patterning, sorting, graphing, measuring and comparing. Our Handwriting Without Tears program in Pre-K teaches children how to write numbers while working on number recognition. Our school has a Home Science kitchen where the classes cook and bake. Through baking, the children learn how to measure and count ingredients. They learn about setting a timer and about clocks. The children also learn concepts such as greater than, less than and equal to. Children participate in “Calendar” daily where they count the days of the week, fill in the date and year, and observe the pattern of numbers on our 100 day chart. In Pre-K, children are introduced to Zero the Hero as part of our math curriculum. Zero the Hero helps teach the concepts of place value, counting by 10s and the meaning and power of zero in basic mathematical equations. Differentiation occurs for those children who show interest and age-appropriate readiness for more advanced math skills. Early Literacy/Language Development The nationally acclaimed program Handwriting Without Tears® is introduced in the three-year-old curriculum. This program incorporates school readiness activities for the students at all ability levels. Through music, movement, building, coloring, and multi - sensory activities, children have fun as they develop important language proficiency, color and shape awareness; along with fine and gross motor control. Our Early Literacy Curriculum involves exposure to letters through “Letter of the Week” and the use of environmental print/logos. The Pre-K students carry on using Handwriting Without Tears® which takes a multi- sensory approach regarding directional skills, listening skills, fine motor activities, and letter formation. Through discussion, finger play, stories and songs, teachers help children expand their vocabulary. The Pre-K curriculumalso includes our “Alphabet Museum”, which builds upon the Letter of the Week program. Children are encouraged to bring a small item from home that starts with the letter of the week. This item is then displayed in the Alphabet Museum for that week. Teachers help children recognize the letter of the alphabet, connect the shape of the letter to the name of the letter, and teach the sound(s) that the letter makes. Teachers also have the children help decide on a movement to go along with the letter sound to help the children remember this information. For example, if a teacher asks a child to tell them what sound the letter “T” makes, it is common for that teacher to see the child “tap” his head while saying “t, t, t”, since that was the chosen movement for that letter and sound. By using auditory, visual and tactile senses, the children are better able to remember what they learn. In both the Three’s and Pre -K clusters, teachers also get a lot of language from the children based on our different un its of study. The teacher writes down exactly what the child says and then reads it back to the child. This way, the child is able to make the connection that what they say can be represented by letters, that the letters are then put together to make words, and then the words are finally put together to form sentences. It is wonderful when a child says to the teacher, “let me see how much I’ve said . ” In both the Three’s and Pre -K, children go to the Library where our librarian reads stories and
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