Welcome to our very 1st Virtual Open House!
Our 1 year old Program
John Calvin Playschool’s 1 year old program is designed to help transition children into being away from their primary caregiver. We do this by nurturing students with a warm and loving environment through age appropriate activities. Children in the program will learn through play, movement, music, tactile art experiences, and interactive circle time. With a toddler-friendly, theme-based approach, children will be introduced to colors, shapes, numbers, the alphabet, and holidays.
Our 1's program is available for children ages 12 months to 23 months and it takes place in the Nursery Room of the Church. There are 3 options: Monday, Wednesday, & Friday from 8:45 - 11:45 am; Tuesday & Thursday from 8:45 - 11:45 am; or Monday through Friday from 8:45 - 11:45 am. These students have Music and Body Movement once a week in their classroom. Students in this program are not potty trained.
Our 1’s: Students must turn 1 by August 1 in order to begin the program.
Our 2 year old Program
John Calvin Playschool’s 2 year old program focuses on providing children opportunities for socialization. This is often times the child’s first school experience and we want it to be positive, enjoyable and fun. By providing a nurturing environment that fosters independence and working relationships, children have opportunities to problem solve, establish friendships, and improve communication skills. Teachers will go over colors, songs, holidays, and seasons with the students, but our main focus is encouraging and promoting a happy, wholesome, and positive self-image. These students also attend a Music and a Body Movement class once a week with a seasonal Bible time. Students in this program DO NOT have to be potty-trained, but we encourage parents who are working on this task at home to discuss it with the teachers so we can reinforce it at school as well.
Our 2's program has 3 options: Monday, Wednesday, & Friday from 8:45 - 11:45 am; Tuesday & Thursday from 8:45 - 11:45 am; or Monday through Friday from 8:45 - 11:45 am.
Our 2’s: Students must turn 2 before November 15th of the current school year.
Our 3 year old Program
John Calvin Playschool’s 3 year old program emphasizes socialization skills and appropriate classroom behavior. More cognitive skills such as number sense, color recognition, calendar components, senses, manners, seasons, holidays, and basic literacy skills are practiced as well. Cutting, gluing, writing, and painting are done frequently to aid in fine motor skill development in addition to circle time with stories and songs. These children also attend Music, Body Movement, and Bible Time once a week. Students in this program DO need to be potty trained because teachers spend most of their time in learning centers with the children.
Our 3's program has 2 options: Monday, Wednesday, & Friday from 8:45 - 11:45 am or Monday through Friday from 8:45 - 11:45 am.
Our 3’s: Students must turn 3 before December 31st of the current school year.
Our 4 year old Pre-K and Pre-K+ Programs
John Calvin Playschool’s 4 year old programs provide hands-on learning activities to completely immerse the students in the learning process. We do not focus on memorization skills, but instead on acquiring essential facts by participating in a wide variety of interesting activities. Our children learn their facts such as colors, counting, shape recognition, letters and their sounds, but they do it in such an active and hands-on manner that they only refer to it as PLAY (educators call this Active Learning). Writing letters and names is emphasized along with science experiments, cooking experiences, thematic show ‘n tells, and Weekly Readers.
Our Pre-K program meets Monday through Friday from 8:45- 11:45 am. Our Pre-K+ program meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:45- 11:45 am and 8:45 am- 2:45 pm on Tuesday and Thursday. On these long days, students bring their lunch and their nap mat. Students in our 4 year old programs go to Music, Body Movement, Bible Time, and Art classes once a week. These classes also attend off-campus field trips, and parents are often able to accompany the class.
Our 4’s: Students must turn 4 before December 31st of the current school year.
Our Transitional Kindergarten (TK) Program
Transitional Kindergarten is a unique program for our students who would benefit from an additional year before Kindergarten and for those that have late birthdays and miss the cut-off date for Kindergarten. These students receive a combination of advanced pre-kindergarten activities and kindergarten curriculum in a developmentally appropriate environment. The small class size allows for much individual attention, lively discussions, and the development of a strong sense of self-esteem. Family homework assignments allow the child to experience the fun of learning at home. Teachers focus on the recognition of letters and their sounds, writing names and numbers, and basic literacy skills. Through exploring, experimenting, and observing, the children acquire many basic principles of science, math and social studies.
The TK program meets Monday and Friday from 8:45- 11:45 am and 8:45 am- 2:45 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On these long days, students bring their lunch and their nap mat. These students attend Music, Body Movement, Bible Time, and Art classes once a week. There are also off-campus field trips, and parents are often able to accompany the students for these experiences. In addition, our Transitional Kindergarten will present a special Christmas play for parents and friends before we break for the Christmas holidays.
Our 5’s: Students must have completed 4’s or turn 5 before December 31st of the current school year.
Our ZOO-PHONICS Curriculum
Zoo-phonics is a multi-sensory program that John Calvin Playschool has implemented to effectively teach our students language arts. Each class level will use Zoo-phonics for letter recognition, letter sound, and letter motion, but the 4’s and 5’s classes will utilize the entire Pre-K and Kindergarten curriculum. Zoo-phonics is a research-based and field-tested program and our teachers are excited about using it to help our students excel and become early readers.
Zoo-phonics is a method developed to make children strong readers and spellers using a “phono” (hearing), “oral” (speaking), “visual” (seeing), “kinesthetic” (moving), and tactile (touching)—whole brain approach. Students actually learn the sounds of the alphabet and advanced phonemic concepts through an easily understood, concrete method of presentation.
Zoo-phonics uses animals drawn in the shapes of the letters for ease in memory. A related body movement is given for each letter. This concrete approach cements the sounds to the shapes of the letters. Lowercase letters and their sounds are taught first (needed 95% of the time in text), capital letters and letter names are taught later.
Educational research repeatedly supports the focus of phonics in early reading programs, as well as the educational benefits of pictorial mnemonics and kinesthetic approaches to learning that are unique to Zoo-phonics.
