Two to four-year-olds are just beginning their journey to literacy, so we are mindful to keep their experiences meaningful and joyful. Preschool children are developing concepts of print, or the understanding that the written language has meaning and relevance to them. We use games, stories, and other playful experiences to create an intrinsic motivation to learn to read and write.

In addition to our work with concepts of print, we offer many opportunities to develop phonological awareness, an important component in learning to read, through songs, poetry, finger-plays, and rhyming games. To create consistency in our practice, we use the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness program daily in order to develop auditory pathways and solidify the neural connections we depend on to read. 

Key Words – A core practice to create meaning-making opportunities. Children create over the course of the year, a key ring of words that are relevant and important to their lives, that acts as a reference library, and begins with their own name. As the year progresses, they have a greater sense of the sounds that letters make and the value of the written word.

Play Plans – A literacy, social skills, and executive function practice in which teachers work with students to develop a written plan for their social-dramatic play and support them in acting out their story together.

Story Play – A playful literacy practice that allows children to dictate a story to a teacher which is acted out in a group time later in the day.

Story Workshop – A playful literacy practice that begins with play experiences such as painting, block play, social-dramatic play, and drawing, and is developed into a story either collaboratively or as a group.

Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Practice - A playful call and response program that develops phonemic awareness, or the ability to hear the individual sounds in words, an essential pre-literacy skill.

Mathematical Thinking Table
Each classroom has a Mathematical Thinking Table available daily. This is a playful opportunity to practice thought problems, logic, one-to-one correspondence, sorting, as well as addition and subtraction with the use of manipulatives, rulers, natural materials and loose parts. 

Construction Area
In addition to an abundance of unit blocks, we offer beautiful loose parts, storytelling figures, and other inspiring materials to invite children to play. In this area, we practice one-to-one correspondence, whole-to-part relationships, and engineering skills as students work together to build.

Practical Life Table
This is an opportunity for students to explore practical materials in order to build skills and problem solve. Weaving, pouring, measuring, sorting, and scooping offer students the opportunity to build fine motor skills and practice conservation, counting, measurement, and other early mathematical thinking skills. 

Every classroom begins the day with Morning Meeting, a time to connect, learn listening and speaking skills, and create feelings of belonging. Children learn to express their ideas publicly as they share their ideas during Morning Meeting and make choices for Small Group Time. 

We use the Social Thinking™ program to teach early social skills such as identifying their emotions, how to successfully collaborate, and how to develop early “learning to learn” skills such as turn-taking, perspective-taking, and “thinking as part of a group”.

Much of our work in the early years is focused on developing a healthy sense of identity and family pride. To propel this forward, we normalize differences through Family Shares, literature, and Persona Dolls, a storytelling tool that allows us to represent diversity and bring diversity to the classroom.