OUR PRESCHOOL

OUR OBJECTIVES

Literacy and Language Arts
To develop expressive and receptive language skills, including, but not limited to: creative dramatics, poetry, finger plays, composing group experience stories, recording individual language, group speaking, listening skills, beginning phonics, and exposure to the best in children’s literature.

Science
To stimulate curiosity and develop a scientific approach by observing, recording, experimenting, sorting, classifying, and being responsible for live animals and plants. Also, to explore the properties of objects using all five senses and through water play and cooking. To establish good health habits including nutrition, exercise, and care of the environment.

Social Studies
To expose children to multicultural customs and historic events. To increase the child’s awareness of the people who are a part of his/her world through classroom visits, visual materials, and dramatic play.

Art
To provide an environment with a multitude of creative experiences for each child to explore, including, but not limited to: painting, clay, collage, woodworking, and paper crafts.

Music
To make music an integral part of a child’s life at school through listening and singing experiences, rhythm, instrument playing, and creative movement and marching.

Mathematics
To explore relationships (e.g. less, more, part, whole, few, many), one-to-one correspondence, matching shapes, proportions, and balance, as well as number concepts.

Perceptual Motor
To enhance the child’s self-perception of his/her body through movement experiences that focus on gross motor skills, spatial relationships, balance, coordination, and unilateral, bilateral, and cross-lateral movements.

Faith Development
To expose the child to the Christian faith through Bible stories, music, and prayer.

At PVUMC Preschool, we believe in the power of play. As beloved children’s advocate Fred Rogers once said, play is “the work of childhood.” We heartily agree—and on-going research confirms our philosophy—that children learn best through play and through making child-directed choices in the classroom. Our teachers and assistants nurture each child’s developmental growth through hands-on learning experiences that encourage exploration and discovery and cultivate a love of learning.

Our curriculum follows the natural progress of development for young children, starting with more informal structure for the youngest child and moving into alternating periods of verbally guided experiences and creative free play as the child grows.