Early Childhood Academics

The Early Childhood math curriculum begins with patterns, calendar activities, sorting, and counting in Preschool 3. 

In Pre-Kindergarten 4, students begin learning about number recognition, graphing, sorting, math vocabulary, and the exploration of math materials.

By the end of Kindergarten, students gain experience with solving addition and subtraction word problems. Students are expected to be able to identify, read, and write numbers up to 20 and to count to 100 or higher.

Early Childhood students are encouraged to develop their sense of wonder through observations and predictions while exploring different materials. 

When students enter Kindergarten, they begin to study plants and animals, weather and seasons, matter, heat and light, day and night and how things move. They further advance by developing and refining their observation skills, making inferences and predictions through investigation and experimentation.

Stories, pre-writing skills, as well as listening and speaking skills are used in Preschool 3 and Pre-Kindergarten 4 to begin formal language development. 

​In Kindergarten, Language Arts skills are expanded to include reading and writing letters, phonemic awareness, beginning and ending word sounds, blending sounds, developing a sight word vocabulary, enhanced writing activities, and listening and following directions.

Early Childhood students learn about holidays and celebrations, cooperation, citizenship, community workers, safety,  self-esteem as a part of the social studies curriculum. 

Religion:
Through the use of a variety of Bible stories, St. John’s Early Childhood students learn about God’s love for them. They learn that their sins are forgiven through God’s Son, Jesus, and participate in weekly Early Childhood chapel services where they worship and praise God.

Social Emotional Learning:
​We believe that one of the most important aspects of Early Childhood Education is social emotional learning (SEL), and we work to foster the emotional and social health of our students as a part of our whole child approach to education. 

Our Preschool 3 & Pre-Kindergarten 4 teachers focus on SEL during the school day by helping students process their emotions and  develop their interpersonal skills.

Beginning in Kindergarten, we implement the Friendzy Program curriculum that continues through Grade 8. This program focuses on self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, social awareness, and relationship skills.

Spanish is taught by Mr. Bryant in Kindergarten through grade 4. In Spanish class, students learn about Spanish culture and study vocabulary and grammar rules as they advance through the grades.

​Learn more about Mr. Bryant on our Teachers & Staff page!

In addition to music activities in the classroom, Early Childhood students also develop an appreciation for music during weekly music class. In music class, students experiment with various instruments, participate in dance and movement exercises, and also learn to sing a number of songs. Our goal is that students will learn to appreciate the gift of music and use this gift to glorify God. 

Music class is taught by Mrs. Jurica in Preschool 3 through 8th grade. Learn more about Mrs. Jurica on our Teachers & Staff page!

Fine and gross motor skills are the main focus points in the Preschool 3 and Pre-Kindergarten 4 physical education courses. Working on these skills takes place during recess and gym class.

As students enter Kindergarten, they have the opportunity to practice throwing, catching, kicking, and dribbling through simple games. Safety habits, good sportsmanship, as well as caring for their bodies are also stressed in Kindergarten.