Davis Hill Kindergarten


Our Kindergarten classrooms are divided into learning centers. The children are encouraged to explore these learning centers each week. A new classroom theme is introduced every week or so to help spark the interest of the children in learning through exploration and discovery.


The learning centers are:
Language & Listening, Writing, Reading, Discovery, Math, Puzzles & Games, Blocks & Building, Arts & Crafts, Painting, Drama/Play


A TYPICAL DAY'S SCHEDULE

ARRIVAL
As the children arrive, they are asked to check their backpacks for notes, papers, or snack money. After hanging up their coats and backpacks, they sign in on their journal page, then assemble at the meeting area and read a book or engage in casual conversation with a friend while waiting for everyone to arrive.

MEETING TIME
Attendance is taken.
Kindergarten News (calendar, weather, and schedule).
New ideas and activities are introduced.

SHARED READING
A large group session where we focus on reading skills in a pleasurable atmosphere through books, charts, chants, and songs.

INSTRUCTION TIME (Their Job)
A lesson that the children must do before they can go to the interest centers to work independently. These lessons are described to you on the last page of the journal each week.

CHOICES
Children are free to choose which learning centers they wish to spend time in. One or two new centers each day is strongly suggested to the children. No more than two are allowed per day.

CLEAN-UP & REPORT
Children are responsible to clean up the room. Then they record how they spent their free time in their journals and report to the teacher.

QUIET READING
As children finish snack, they are encouraged to read some books alone or with a friend.

SHARING & STORYTIME
We end the day as a group, enjoying a good story and sharing our work that we completed during work time.


THE CURRICULUM


PERSONAL/SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

The classroom is set up to encourage your child to learn and practice appropriate work habits and social skills such as:

  • interacting and cooperating with peers
  • developing new friendships
  • demonstrating self-control
  • listening and following directions
  • staying on task
  • being self-directed
  • being able to problem-solve and make decisions


MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

The children are given daily opportunities to strengthen large and small muscle skills and coordination.

GROSS MOTOR - The children receive physical education from the gym teacher, Ms. Howell. Please see that your child brings or wears sneakers on gym days. Weather permitting; we try to have the children play outside the last 15 minutes of the session. Please see that your child wears appropriate clothing.

FINE MOTOR - Examples of small muscle skills are:
  • holds pencil correctly
  • holds scissors correctly
  • glues appropriately
  • ties, buttons, zips, and snaps

VISUAL MOTOR - Activities that involve eye-hand coordination are:
  • assembles puzzles
  • copies lines, shapes, numbers, and letters
  • cuts and traces lines
  • follows mazes
  • writes name


A program called Hands at Work and Play is incorporated into our curriculum to provide additional practice for children having difficulty in these areas.

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT


The children have daily opportunity to meet together as a whole group for purposes of conversing and sharing.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

READING - Our goal is to help the children become literate. We use a combination of two reading programs: Fundations ( Wilson ) and Trophies (Harcourt Brace). Fundations provides a systematic and explicit approach to reading and spelling with phonics. Trophies combines this instruction with the reading of good literature. They are taught that reading is pleasurable and meaningful. Good literature and language are introduced to the children through shared readings. Big books, experience charts, chants, poems, and familiar songs written out help to attain this goal.

Skills which can be taught during shared readings are:

  • word-solving through meaning
  • directional conventions
  • prediction
  • sight vocabulary
  • letter-sound association
  • letter names
  • punctuation
  • intonation patterns

Phonological and phonemic awareness are words that we often hear in relation to reading instruction. Surprisingly, neither refers directly to reading. Both terms relate to how we hear words. However, recent research shows that these factors are critical to reading success. Phonological awareness is the understanding that the sounds we speak have structure.

Phonological skills include:
  • awareness that sentences are composed of separate words
  • understand of the concept of rhyming
  • awareness that words can be divided into “chunks” (syllables)
  • awareness that phonemes are sound units within syllables and words

Phonemic awareness is a type of phonological awareness. It means understanding that the words we hear are composed of individual sounds within the word.

Phonemic awareness skills include:
  • Discrimination (Do wish and fish begin the same?)
  • Isolation (Tell me the first, middle and last sound you hear in fish .)
  • Blending (Put these parts together to form a word: sun – shine, b – ig, c – a – t.)
  • Segmentation (The word sunset has more than one part, clap once for each part. The word mat has three sounds, finger tap each sound.)
  • Deletion (Say boat , say boat again without the /b/.)
  • Substitution (Say boat , say it again, but instead of a /b/ say /g/.)

The three biggest predictors of learning to read are:
  • Letter name knowledge
  • Phoneme segmentation ability
  • Understanding of print concepts

The following are early indicators in 5-year-old “high risk” students of possible problems in the acquisition of reading and writing skills:
  • difficulty with letter recognition
  • difficulty retelling stories
  • unusual pencil grip
  • difficulty rhyming
  • difficulty in classification and categorization
  • fine-motor/visual motor problems
  • difficulty remembering directions given orally
  • seeming lack of interest in attending to oral language

As parents, you may often wonder what you can do at home to encourage the development of the skills needed by children to be good readers. Linguistic awareness is promoted as children are engaged in various informal activities. Some activities are: reciting nursery rhymes, singing songs, listening to stories with lots of repetition, working with rhythm such as pat-a-cake, playing rhyming games, playing alphabet games, talking about the sounds in words, and any other informal verbal activities.

Above all, remember to read. Reading opens a door to an endless world. Talk about what you read, share ideas about the story, point out words, point out letters and invite participation by your children:
  • Encourage your child to answer “wonder” statements (“I wonder why…”).
  • Help your child expand his/her vocabulary by rephrasing. [When your child says something such as “He's scared,” you could say, “Yes, the dog barks because he is frightened, you are correct!”]
  • Ask open-ended questions.
  • Limit the amount of TV.
  • Provide household props that encourage pretend play.
  • Make books available for your children to explore and enjoy on their way to becoming lifelong readers.

LIBRARY – Our librarian is Mrs. Sullivan
The children are allowed to borrow two books at a time.

WRITING - Through process writing, the children are engaged in authorship. It is important that they perceive themselves as writers from the start. We are letting the children learn written language by using it, as best they can, for real purposes.

There are stages that you may see your child's writing go through:
  • Pictures - The children express themselves entirely through their drawings.
  • Awareness of Symbols - The children may use lines, circles, squiggles, or a series of letters to represent their thoughts.
  • Random Words - A very short stage, children copy or write any words down. It doesn't matter that the printed word doesn't match the spoken word.
  • Functional Spelling - Sometimes called temporary or inventive spelling, it can be a very frustrating stage. The children struggle to put down every sound. They start with beginning sounds, later on move to adding ending sounds, and finally work on middle sounds as well.
  • Conventional Spelling - When children can combine their knowledge of phonics and sight vocabulary to get the “dictionary spellings”.

MATH – The Everyday Mathematics program is used at Davis Hill School . The activities are designed to help children see relationships and interconnections in mathematics and to enable them to deal flexibly with mathematical ideas and concepts.

Some skills and concepts covered in this program is:
  • estimating
  • counting
  • numeration
  • measurement
  • geometry
  • patterns
  • data collecting
  • problem-solving

MUSIC & ART – The children receive music and art instruction. Our music teacher is Mrs. Howard and our art teacher is Mrs. Wornham.



THE ARTS
Integration of the arts into the curriculum occurs daily. Most children learn easily through drama, music, poetry, storytelling and puppetry.

CELEBRATIONS
We celebrate each child's birth during the school year. If you would like to help by sending in a special snack for the occasion, it would certainly be appreciated. Saturday birthdays will be celebrated on Friday, and Sunday birthdays on Monday. Children with summer birthdays will be assigned a specific day during the last few weeks of school so no one will be excluded from a birthday celebration.

AGES AND STAGES
As your child grows, you will probably notice that he/she is moving through different stages of development. These stages are very predictable and each child will go through these stages at his/her pace. A child's developmental age may or may not correspond with her/his chronological age. It is important to keep in mind that children seldom exhibit the characteristics of just one age, since not all areas of their development proceed at an even rate. But recognizing at what age children are functioning developmentally, better allows us to accommodate their needs.

 PRE-K (Developmentally 4)
Typical four-year olds tend to be out-of-bounds. They find it hard to remain in one spot. Most fours are not ready to sit quietly for any prolonged period. They love to do anything which will exercise their large muscles. Few are ready for any sustained fine motor activity. Imaginative play prevails; they love dressing up. You will find as your child moves toward five, that he/she is sorting out fact and fantasy.

EARLY KINDERGARTEN (Developmentally 5)
This is a time of equilibrium -- usually of great happiness. Behavior is smooth, even, and literal. The child likes to help, is cooperative, and wants to be good. He or she is dependent on authority and often needs approval. The child can be expected to work at quiet sitting activities for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, but visual ability does not facilitate copying from a blackboard yet. Manuscript printing will be introduced, but the child is not expected to stay within the lines. The spacing of numbers and letters will be inconsistent. There will be some reversing of numbers and letters. You may find that your child does not communicate much about school at home.

LATER IN KINDERGARTEN (Developmentally 5.5)
Some time during the year, the child enters a transition period into his/her six year old stage. This is a time of imbalance, often called “the break-up stage.” The child experiences visual and auditory confusions. Printing will tend to be less neat, and reversals of letters and numbers are at their peak. This is the most difficult and frustrating time for reading and writing tasks. The child tires more quickly now. You may find your child testing authority and limits. He/she has become very insecure with his/her feelings. This uneasy age is characterized by complaints, temper tantrums, and oppositional behavior (wonderful at home, terrible at school or vice versa). Consistent rules and discipline are even more necessary than at the beginning of the school year.

READY FOR FIRST (Developmentally 6)
Six is the stage of great drive and eagerness. They are entering a growth spurt physically, emotionally, and cognitively. Talking and teething are characteristic of the six year old. They focus on quantity, not quality now. Visually, the six year old can easily track from left to right. The importance of friends now equals the importance of parents and teachers.

SCREENING AND CONFERENCES

During the first month of school, all children are screened for potential problems or weaknesses in each of the learning modalities: auditory, visual, speech & language, and gross & fine motor control. Results of this screening are given in your child's first progress report. You will receive progress reports three times during the school year.

Although time is not allotted during the school day for parent-teacher conferences, you are welcome to contact us with any questions or concerns about your child. Conferencing about your child can occur in many ways: a written note, a phone call, email, or meeting. Our goal is to maintain effective communication about the education of your child.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

  • A written note should be sent in when your child returns after an absence from school.
  • If your child is to go home any other way than normally scheduled, a written note is again required.
  • The cost of the snack is $6.50/month, to be paid at the beginning of the month. You may pay in advance Payment must be made by check to Wachusett Regional School District .
  • Please label all clothes to prevent loss.
  • Remember that teachers may not accept cash or personal checks for any reason (book orders, snack money, etc...) Please make your check out appropriately.

Kindergarten Faculty:

Mrs. Amaral - Mrs. Benoit - Mrs. Colton

When available, click a teacher's name for their individual class page.