LKG (K1) & UKG (K2) - 4 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.)