Transitional Kindergarten
Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is the first year of a two-year Kindergarten program for students turning five years old between September 2 and February 2. This is a special opportunity for our "young five" students to become confident learners in a nurturing classroom environment. This classroom community is designed to help students develop relationships, express their feelings, and advocate for themselves socially, emotionally, and academically.
Our focus during TK is to support and challenge our students to become effective communicators who explore, navigate and assess their own learning. Each of our TK students enters class with a unique set of skills, knowledge, and talents. Using a variety of developmentally appropriate learning experiences based on kindergarten standards, our children will learn to share and build upon their prior knowledge and abilities. Students get to work cooperatively and independently during lessons that are presented during whole group, small group, and learning center time. Lessons include hands-on exploration, play based activities, modeling and giving children a variety of opportunities to practice new skills.
Parents, teachers and students are all partners in providing positive, emotionally supportive relationships that promote a healthy learning environment. Both parents and teachers provide rich oral language experiences to develop and enrich early literacy skills such as alphabet knowledge, rules of print, phonological awareness, background knowledge and vocabulary. Math concepts and relationships are discovered and taught during play-based activities as well as in the child's everyday environment.
At this developmental stage, students are learning and honing basic skills for reading and writing as well as how to build and maintain positive relationships with peers and adults. In Transitional Kindergarten, learning is also incorporated into routines like singing songs that emphasize phonemic awareness and centers that allow children to experience math, science and language in guided environments. Students are encouraged to explore and “play” to improve their thinking, social and problem solving skills.
This first year of Kindergarten is a cooperative effort that involves teachers, students and families. We are focused on making our students as responsible and self-reliant as possible by setting high expectations in both social and academic areas. Positive participation in your child’s education will help him/her achieve success.
