Aspen's Pre-Kindergarten Program!

Aspen School is happy to offer two pre-kindergarten classrooms for 4 years who live within the Aspen zone. Our pre-Kindergarten team is excited to launch the coming year and is busy preparing a program that supports the ‘whole child’s’ physical development, emotional well-being, and intellectual growth.

Social and Emotional Learning

Aspen’s pre-K team supports an emotionally warm and positive approach to learning. They understand the importance of addressing each child’s social and emotional development during the school day.  What is social and emotional learning? Social emotional learning, SEL, is the process through which we acquire and use the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, build supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. 

The preschool classroom is a caring, active, and emotionally-charged place. Children are observing and absorbing lessons about emotions throughout the day.  Our pre-school team promotes core SEL competencies like managing emotions, conflict resolution, empathy, and relationship skills, in several ways.  First, our teachers provide explicit lessons using specific prompts and activities.  Also, they support emerging social and emotional skills through scaffolding, which are progressive supports that build upon what children already know. Plus they use books and prompt children to think about their own experiences.  Additionally, children learn a great deal through observing and imitating others.  Therefore, our pre-k team models rules and expectations for interacting with others.  Moreover, our staff responds to a child’s feelings by validating them and responding constructively to them. Finally, they guide children toward reflection and building positive emotional skills. 

Intellectual and Physical Growth

The pre-K team provides a language-rich environment where students’ language skills are nurtured.  Interestingly in a language-rich environment a child’s vocabulary grows from 900 to 2,500 words between the ages of 3 and 5.  Additionally, our teachers explicitly teach pre-literacy and vocabulary skills through the use of Three Cheers for Pre-K curriculum.  Also, the children engage in a wide range of hands-on activities that challenge them to observe closely, ask questions, test their ideas or solve a problem.  Activities, such as painting, drawing, cutting, and using play dough strengthen a child’s fine motor muscles in their hands.  Activities, such as climbing, balancing, swinging, using balls and riding toys contribute to strengthening children’s large muscle skills. To nurture their curiosity and motivation to learn, teachers use children’s interests and ideas to create activities. Lastly, students develop their creativity through art and music/movement activities.  

Aspen’s pre-Kindergarten program is an opportunity for your child to learn to enjoy school, to share, to follow instructions, and to build the foundations for future learning.

5 Ways to Help Transition Your Child to Pre-Kindergarten

Full Article Link:  https://www.noodle.com/articles/5-ways-to-help-transition-your-child-to-preschool

1. Talk about preschool in a positive way.

2. Take your child to school to meet the teacher.

3. Practice spending time apart by taking your preschooler to a friend or family member’s house.

4. Establish routines early on with your child.

5. Empower your child by giving her some control