LKG (K1) & UKG (K2) - 4 to 6 years old

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LKG (K1) & UKG (K2) - 5 to 6 years old

First Steps is committed to providing an excellent education that meets each student’s interests, abilities, and needs and promotes an appreciation for diversity in our community as an integral part of school life. First Steps challenges each student to develop intellectual independence, creativity and curiosity and a sense of responsibility toward others both within the school and in the community at large.

Story time is particularly important for this age group. The child’s imagination and the increased ability to remember the past make the child an interesting storyteller. Teachers give students opportunities to recite familiar stories that they have read. Children learn that reading is about playing with words and sounds through rhymes, songs and stories.

The curriculum for the kindergarten classes has been structured to foster the development of lifetime cognitive skills. We encourage our children to become accomplished readers and writers, skilled in mathematics and practiced in the arts of observation, creative thinking, and problem solving. The learning process is as important as the educational content. We provide opportunities for children to question and express their curiosity, which results in developing confidence, independence, and high self-esteem. The classrooms provide nurturing, child-centered settings for children to master their language, math, science, social, and sensorial skills. Through our thematic based curriculum, modified Montessori methods that provide for the exploration of individual interests as they develop, high academic standards, and a strong focus on social development, First Steps students will aspire to become lifelong learners.

Kindergarten Abilities:

  • Soak up the world of knowledge with incredible speed.
  • Capable of nonstop mental and physical gymnastics.
  • Respond joyfully to dance, creative movement, outdoor play and drama.
  • Learn best through their own play, by being read to, by acting out stories and fairy tales, by manipulating clay, paint brushes, finger paints, building blocks, math materials.
  • Outdoor play is essential. This is an age where much learning is transmitted through the large muscles.
  • Learning goes from the hand to the head, not the other way around.
  • Teachers need to focus on observing and redirecting behavior and asking questions that lead children toward the next level of cognitive exploration and understanding.
  • Learning is at its best for this age group when it is both structured (with predictable schedule) and exploratory (interest areas where children can initiate their own activity.)

Thematic Based, Interdisciplinary Curriculum:

Each quarter a new theme will be developed and explored. Students will have opportunities to build upon their language arts, math and science, and social studies skills. Students will begin to learn how “things around them” are all connected. Specifically, our thematic based, interdisciplinary curriculum is built upon the following:

Language Arts:

Students will build and strengthen their word knowledge, language development, verbal expression and reasoning, social interaction and awareness. All of these are essential pre-reading skills. Students will learn to name and classify shapes, letters, numbers and natural forms such as shells, stones and leaves. Students will master specific words and concepts such as back, front, under, over, in, on, and up. Proficiency in these areas is achieved through circle time activities, finger play, story time, dramatic play, music, creative movement, free play both indoors and out.

Math & Science:

Students are exposed to counting, numerical recognition and reasoning, whole-part relationships, spatial relationships, and identifying and creating patterns. These skills are achieved through block building; stringing beads, puzzle assembly, calendar activities and art activities. Manipulatives teach the children to sort, order and classify. Collecting, measuring and graphing are taught through cooking and nature activities.

Social Studies:

This curriculum is designed to open children to the world around them. We begin at the center of the child's experience -- themselves -- and spiral out to include the classroom community, the school community and the community beyond school. As we discuss, explore and experience the world, the children obtain information about themselves and their families. Students explore how basic needs are met, families are constituted, and holidays are observed in similar and different ways throughout the world. The children experience multicultural awareness and appreciation through food, music, language and art. At the heart of this curriculum is the need to promote acceptance of diversity. Cultural awareness is taught in a variety of activities (various types of music, celebration of different holidays and customs, ethnic foods served).

Typical Learning Centers in a 4 to 6 year-old Classroom

  • Library- Language / Books
  • Reading and Writing
  • Technology / Computer
  • Construction / Blocks
  • Math and Science
  • Dramatic Play
  • Art and Sensory Experiences (sand/water table)
  • Circle Time (Morning/Afternoon Discussion area)