Not sure your child is ready for Kindergarten?
PARENT PAGES
West Shore’s preschool program has a wonderful reputation in the community for preparing children for kindergarten. There are many components of school readiness, and our dedicated staff works with small groups and large, and as much as possible with individual children to strengthen their skills.
Teachers help children to:
1) listen to
instructions and then follow them. Children need these skills to function
in class, to keep up with the teacher and with their peers.
2) encourage self-help skills. Teachers
may help early on, but eventually children learn to put on their coats and shoes
and go to the bathroom by themselves. Children need to be fairly
self-sufficient by school age.
3) become familiar with the ABCs and numbers.
Teachers incorporate letter and number recognition into themes which have been
developed out of the children’s interests.
4) hold a pencil and to cut with scissors.
Children need these fine motor skills to work on writing their names and the
alphabet and to keep up with classroom projects.
5) become interested in books. Teachers
read to the children everyday and encourage the children to read books during
their day. You will see children ‘reading’ to one another guided by the
pictures or remembered text from prior exposure to particular books.
6) be curious and receptive to learning new
things. We hope to expand children’s curiosity so that it is stronger than
their fear of the unfamiliar.
7) get along well with other classmates.
A lot of a preschool teacher’s day is spent encouraging sharing and taking
turns. Some children need help entering play with others. Children are
interacting all day, and social skills are particularly important for success in
school. In fact, research shows social skills are more important than exposure
to foreign languages or other academics.
8) work together with others as part of a
group. The ability to put one's needs second, to compromise and join in a
consensus with other children, is also part of emotional competence.
How we play...
• Boys and girls play dress-up and house in the housekeeping corner, spreading out
to other
areas to 'go shopping, take baby to the doctor'.
• Children build elaborate block structures and pretend play with props in the
carpeted area.
• Several children listen to a story tape and follow the story in a book.
• A group of children sit at the table working on a teacher-directed project
based on the
current theme. Projects focus on school readiness skills
cleverly disguised as fun!
• Children pour and measure at the water table, sorting and splashing.
• A child retells a story or makes up a new one using the flannel board and
flannel board
characters.
• At Circle all the children recite the days of the week, the name of the month
and holidays,
name the season and discuss the weather and the day's
helping-hands tasks such as line
leader and setting the table.
• Story time is on the carpet, sitting in the 'kindergarten way'.
• A child paints at the easel choosing from lots of colors with a large brush.
• Children follow a record and do motions with their teacher.
• No one is in the classroom. Everyone is in Baker Hall
(our gym), climbing,
bouncing balls,
or playing hockey.
• Two children are working at the computer with two or three
on-lookers, learning
beginning sounds, sorting objects by their shape and color, or
counting steps to
rescue a familiar character.