Monday and Wednesday 11:15 – 1:45
Class size limit for the Young Five’s program is 8 students. This program is taught by our highly qualified Early Childhood Education (ECE) program director and is assisted by another qualified ECE teacher. That means that the teacher to student ratio is 1 to 4! The Young 5’s program is designed for students that have attended preschool previously and are not quite ready for kindergarten. To be eligible for this program, students must be 5 on or before Decemeber 1, 2013 or have teacher recommendation.
The Young 5’s program is designed to be an extension of the 4’s and 5’s morning program. The theme for our Young 5’s is more, more, more! More printing, more reading, more number work, more fine motor work. The Young 5’s are a unique group of children who have been given the gift of time before beginning kindergarten, yet need (and are capable of) more activities than is provided in a 2 hr. and 15 min. day. They will have the experience of staying at school later in the day and eating a lunch there (the highlight for many of the children!), as well as going into a little more depth with their readiness skills. A daily plan will look like the following:
11:15-11:30 – Bid farewell to the morning friends and return to our Young 5’s room downstairs.
11:30-12:30 – Meet for a story and discussion of our afternoon plan. We will also make our own calendars each month during this time. The Young 5’s will discuss the calendar in more depth as well as help to fill out the numbers for the month, doing more and more of that themselves as the year progresses. They will also decorate their personal calendar relating to the month. In addition, we will have another enrichment activity. These include writing our own class books (with lots of phonetic spelling and sounding out of words), working with number sets for their number books, cooking and making our own recipe books – the possibilities are endless with a small group!
12:30-12:35 – Hand washing before lunch.
12:35-1:00 – Lunch
1:00-1:20 – Developmental play ‒ The Young 5’s love to play games! This is a time when they do have free play choices (or more time on the playground), but an excellent opportunity to get a board or card game going. They are capable of playing games such as Alphabet or Number Bingo (they love to be the “caller”!) with more independence, as well as board games with a little more depth. This time is also used for “chalkboard time” (working with guided letter/picture formation with their own individual chalkboards), one on one reading, etc. Real cooperative play and problem solving during play begins to emerge at this age and is strongly encouraged.
1:20-1:40 – Clean-up and Class Journal – We have a large-sized journal that each child takes a turn at writing each day. They choose to write about one thing that they did during the afternoon. As we write the words, we will discuss sentence structure (capitals at the beginning, spaces between words, periods at the end), as well as anything else pertaining to books and reading.
1:40-1:45 – Prepare to go home, meet parents at curbside pick-up.