St. Catherine of Siena

The children spend time “reading” the calendar and talking about the weather. We learn about the days of the week, months of the year, practice counting, and work on patterning. The four year olds also complete their own individual calendars as well.

Pre-Kindergarteners learn concepts of the Catholic faith: a love of God, God’s creations, kindness to others, and the life of Jesus. Bible stories are read daily. Children will also begin to learn prayers essential to our Catholic faith.

We learn math through hands-on activities, games, and songs. Concepts taught include: number recognition, counting, ordinal numbers, measurement, patterning, sorting, shapes, graphing, one-to-one correspondence, and time concepts.

Pre-Kindergarteners explore pre-reading and pre-writing skills. Our Pre-K3 Class uses a series called AlphaTales to introduce the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. A new animal mascot is introduced for each letter of the alphabet. The Pre-K4 Class using a series called, “Happily Ever After”, presented by the Rowland Foundation to promote reading readiness through classic children’s stories and fairy tales. They are taught that print has meaning, letter names and their sounds.

The children learn through exploration! The children will use their five senses to help explore various science activities. On a daily basis the class observes the weather conditions. We go on nature walks, plant seeds and watch them grow, observe the life cycle of a butterfly with our very own caterpillars!

Pre-Kindergarteners have center time. Our centers include: block area, housekeeping, art, puzzles, games, table top toys, library, play dough, rice table, train table, writing, science, and math interest centers.

The children have opportunities throughout the day to develop their coordination through music and movement. The Pre-K3 Class will have their own Christmas Program and Pre-K4 Class will participate in the “big” school Christmas Program.

Sharing the wonderful world of books is part of the Pre-Kindergarten daily routine. Fiction and Non-fiction books are read. Retelling, acting out stories, and sequencing are skills that are taught through story time. “Reading Buddies” (older students) read to the Pre-Kindergarteners throughout the year.

Students have an opportunity to share something from their home environment with the class once a week.

Students engage in activities each week to develop skills such as jumping, skipping and hopping. The four year olds attend P.E. once a week. The three year olds go outside daily and play on the outdoor playground as well as play games outside to promote gross motor skills.