Curriculum

Getting your child ready for Kindergarten is very important.

Kindergarten Education has changed much in recent years.

Kindergarten Preparation is an expectation in all New York State school districts.

The Rainbow Prechool is committed to meeting your child's needs & keeping them excited about learning well into their future.

Our innovative curriculum exceeds New York State's Kindergarten Readiness standards in stimulating and wonderful ways.

The list below provides the framework on which our curriculum is built.

 

Early Childhood Education Guidelines:
New York State Association for the Education of Young Children

Social-Emotional Development

1. Children have varied opportunities to engage throughout the day with teaching staff who are attentive and responsive to them, and facilitate their social competence and their ability to learn through interacting with others.
2. Children have varied opportunities to recognize and name their own and others' feelings.
3. Children have varied opportunities to learn the skills needed to regulate their emotions, behavior, and attention.
4. Children have varied opportunities to develop a sense of competence and positive attitudes toward learning, such as persistence, engagement, curiosity, and mastery.
5. Children have varied opportunities to develop skills for entering into social groups, developing friendships, learning to help, and other pro-social behavior.
6. Children have varied opportunities to interact positively, respectfully, and cooperatively with others; learn from and with one another; and resolve conflicts in constructive ways.
7. Children have varied opportunities to learn to understand, empathize with, and take into account other people's perspectives.

Physical Development

1. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that support fine-motor development.
2. Children have varied opportunities and are provided equipment to engage in large motor experiences that
- stimulate a variety of skills.
- enhance sensory-motor integration.
- develop controlled movement (balance, strength, coordination).
- enable children with varying abilities to have large-motor experiences similar to those of their peers.
- range from familiar to new and challenging.
- help them learn physical games with rules and structure.

Language Development

1. Children are provided with opportunities for language acquisition that align with the program philosophy, consider family perspectives, and consider community perspectives.
2. Children are provided opportunities to experience oral and written communication in a language their family uses or understands.
4. Children have varied opportunities to develop competence in verbal and nonverbal communication by responding to questions; communicating needs, thoughts, and experiences; and describing things and events.
5. Children have varied opportunities to develop vocabulary through conversations, experiences, field trips, and books.
6. Children who are non-verbal are provided alternative communication strategies.
7. Children have varied opportunities and materials that encourage them to have discussions to solve problems that are interpersonal and those that are related to the physical world.
8. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that encourage them to engage in discussions with one another.

Curriculum Content Area for Cognitive Development

1. Children have opportunities to become familiar with print. They are actively involved in making sense of print, and they have opportunities to become familiar with, recognize, and use print that is accessible throughout the classroom:
- Items belonging to a child are labeled with his or her name.
- Materials are labeled.
- Print is used to describe some rules and routines.
- Teaching staff help children recognize print and connect it to spoken words.
2. Children have varied opportunities to
- be read books in an engaging manner in group or individualized settings at least twice a day in full-day programs and at least once daily in half-day programs.
- be read to regularly in individualized ways including one-to-one or in small groups of two to six children.
- explore books on their own and have places that are conducive to the quiet enjoyment of books.
- have access to various types of books, including storybooks, factual books, books with rhymes, alphabet books, and wordless books.
- be read the same book on repeated occasions.
- retell and reenact events in storybooks.
- engage in conversations that help them understand the content of the book.
- be assisted in linking books to other aspects of the curriculum.
- identify the parts of books and differentiate print from pictures.
3. Children have multiple and varied opportunities to write:
- Writing materials and activities are readily available in art, dramatic play, and other learning centers.
- Various types of writing are supported including scribbling, letter-like marks, and developmental spelling.
- Children have daily opportunities to write or dictate their ideas.
- Children are provided needed assistance in writing the words and messages they are trying to communicate.
- Children are given the support they need to write on their own, including access to the alphabet and to printed words about topics of current interest, both of which are made available at eye level or on laminated cards.
- Children see teaching staff model functional use of writing and are helped to discuss the many ways writing is used in daily life.
4. Children are regularly provided multiple and varied opportunities to develop phonological awareness:
- Children are encouraged to play with the sounds of language, including syllables, word families, and phonemes, using rhymes, poems, songs, and finger plays.
- Children are helped to identify letters and the sounds they represent.
- Children are helped to recognize and produce words that have the same beginning or ending sounds.
- Children's self-initiated efforts to write letters that represent the sounds of words are supported.
5. Children are given opportunities to recognize and write letters.
6. Children have access to books and writing materials throughout the classroom.
7. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to build understanding of numbers, number names, and their relationship to object quantities and to symbols.
8. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to categorize by one or two attributes such as shape, size, and color.
9. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that encourage them to integrate mathematical terms into everyday conversation.
10. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that help them understand the concept of measurement by using standard and non-standard units of measurement.
11. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to understand basic concepts of geometry by, for example, naming and recognizing two- and three-dimensional shapes and recognizing how figures are composed of different shapes.
12. Children are provided varied opportunities to build an understanding of time in the context of their lives, schedules, and routines.
14. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that help them recognize and name repeating patterns.

Curriculum Content Area for Cognitive Development: Science

1. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to learn key content and principles of science such as
- the difference between living and nonliving things (e.g., plants versus rocks) and life cycles of various organisms (e.g., plants, butterflies, humans).
- earth and sky (e.g., seasons; weather; geologic features; light and shadow; sun, moon, and stars).
- structure and property of matter (e.g., characteristics that include concepts such as hard and soft, floating and sinking) and behavior of materials (e.g., transformation of liquids and solids by dissolving or melting).
2. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that encourage them to use the five senses to observe, explore, and experiment with scientific phenomena.
3. Children are provided varied opportunities to use simple tools to observe objects and scientific phenomena.
4. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to collect data and to represent and document their findings (e.g., through drawing or graphing).
5. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that encourage them to think, question, and reason about observed and inferred phenomena.
6. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that encourage them to discuss scientific concepts in everyday conversation.
7. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that help them learn and use scientific terminology and vocabulary associated with the content areas.

Curriculum Content Area for Cognitive Development: Technology

***The use of passive media such as television, film, videotapes, and audiotapes is limited to developmentally appropriate programming.
1. All children have opportunities to access technology (e.g., tape recorders, microscopes, rulers) that they can use by themselves, collaboratively with their peers, and with teaching staff or a parent.
2. Technology is used to extend learning within the classroom and to integrate and enrich the curriculum.

Curriculum Area for Cognitive Development: Creative Expression and Appreciation for the Arts

1. Children are provided varied opportunities to gain an appreciation of art, music, drama, and dance in ways that reflect cultural diversity.
2. Children are provided varied opportunities to learn new concepts and vocabulary related to art, music, drama, and dance.
3. Children are provided varied opportunities to develop and widen their repertoire of skills that support artistic expression (e.g., cutting, gluing, and caring for tools).
4. Children are provided many and varied open-ended opportunities and materials to express themselves creatively through music, drama, dance and two- and three-dimensional art.
5. Children have opportunities to respond to the art of other children and adults.

Curriculum Content Area for Cognitive Development: Health and Safety

1. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that encourage good health practices such as serving and feeding themselves, rest, good nutrition, exercise, hand washing, and tooth brushing.
2. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to help them learn about nutrition, including identifying sources of food and recognizing, preparing, eating, and valuing healthy foods.
3. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that increase their awareness of safety rules in their classroom, home, and community.
4. Children have opportunities to practice safety procedures.
5. Children are provided opportunities to discuss, ask questions, and express fears about visiting the doctor, clinic, hospital, or dentist; getting shots; and taking medicine.

Curriculum Content Area for Cognitive Development: Social Studies

1. Children are provided varied learning opportunities that foster positive identity and an emerging sense of self and others.
2. Children are offered opportunities to become a part of the classroom community so that each child feels accepted and gains a sense of belonging
3. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to build their understanding of diversity in culture, family structure, ability, language, age, and gender in non-stereotypical ways.
4. Children are provided opportunities and materials to explore social roles in the family and workplace through play.
5. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to learn about the community in which they live.
6. Children have varied opportunities to engage in discussions about fairness, friendship, responsibility, authority, and differences.
7. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to learn about physical characteristics of their local environment as a foundation for learning geography.
8. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials to learn how people affect their environment in positive (e.g., recycling) and negative (e.g., polluting) ways.
9. Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that allow them to contribute to the well-being of their classroom and the community, including care for the social and physical environments in which they live.
10. Children are provided opportunities and materials that build a foundation for understanding economic concepts (e.g., playing restaurant, managing a store, and identifying and exchanging money.)