Preschool Education

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 The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECS/SDE) believe that early learning standards can be a valuable part of a comprehensive, high-quality system of services for young preschool children.

Central Christian Academy supports this belief in our Preschool education department through the use of our comprehensive curriculum planning that encompasses a variety of learning styles.
 

Our preschool program supports early education through the integration of faith based curriculum, community awareness activities (guest community speakers or demonstrations such as firefighters, Game and Fish Commission Mobile Aquarium, etc.), musical productions, hands-on exploration and teacher-guided classroom discovery.

We believe that your preschool child should learn through a hands-on, exploratory process that is guided by our well educated teachers. From the arrangement of the classroom, to the specific teacher language utilized, your child will learn a variety of skills and concepts to prepare them for kindergarten and beyond.   Kindergarten readiness is important.  We ensure that each child is ready for kindergarten through teaching the Common-Core aligned preschool education, developing individual child portfolios throughout the year and completing individual child learning assessments (such as the Kindergarten Readiness Indicator Checklist http://arkansased.org/parents/pdf/kric_booklet_teachers.pdf).
 

Some of the activities that we do with our preschool classes include, but are not limited to:

• Music, Movement and Finger Plays: Our preschool classes participate in two organized faith based musical programs per year (Christmas and Spring).  The daily classroom is equipped with a variety of musical instruments, and movement materials.  Songs for learning colors and phonetic sounds are used during circle times and throughout the day.  These songs are shared with parents, so they can be reinforced at home.
• Bible Focus:  Daily bible lessons are shared through a variety of materials, such as flannel board stories, finger plays, songs and reading scripture from the Bible.  
• Language/Cognitive: Language development in our preschool classrooms is always fun to listen to!  Children at this age are quite the talkers, and teaching them to speak properly and to communicate their thoughts clearly is important!  We often ask children to remember to “use their words.  Our teachers implement a variety of language activities in their daily lesson planning such as finger plays, rhyming games, phonics, and other fun activities.
• Gross Motor: Preschool children are on the move!  Encouraging gross motor play through supervised activities inside and outside is important.  Our gross motor activities also incorporate encouraging peer interaction, cooperative play, following directions and reinforcing the daily curriculum theme.   Indoor activities range from an indoor mini-trampoline, parachute activities, to even an indoor obstacle course through the classroom on rainy days!  Our outdoor play space is age appropriate for your preschool child.  We offer two separate preschool outdoor play areas, with varying levels of equipment. 
• Social/Emotional: In addition to academic kindergarten readiness, we also believe that encouraging social-emotional growth and development of preschooler’s is very important.   Your preschool child is learning about themselves, their desire to have control in their environment, their ability to utilize a longer attention span, and the intricacies of interacting with their peers.  Our teachers nurture these social emotional skills daily through peer mediation and role playing.  
• Sensory Exploration: Preschool children enjoy sensory exploration, in other words they like to touch and feel and smell and explore!  We build on sensory exploration in the classroom by incorporating language/cognitive skills, gross and fine motor skills and movement.  Our preschool classroom is equipped with a variety of equipment to promote sensory exploration, such as a sand and/or water table, play dough, and different writing materials.  Even through graphing the smells, tastes and feeling of different items is integrating sensory exploration into science, math and language concepts.  You should see the chart they create about broccoli!

We value communication between parents and teachers.  You will receive a daily information that details the curriculum, bible focus, meals and activities enjoyed by your child using our convenient app.  We encourage parents to read these daily notes and reinforce the concepts at home.  Parent teacher conferences are held twice a year.  These conferences ensure that everyone is on the right track for kindergarten readiness, and enable us to work with each parent to meet the needs of their child.

We provide all your child’s meals for breakfast, lunch and PM snack according to the Special Nutrition Program.  We send parents our healthy weekly menu so that you are always informed.  Special dietary restrictions may apply.

Health and Safety is very important at Central Christian Academy.  Our staff is diligent in hand washing practices and daily hand washing procedures.  In addition, we have magnetic locking security features on the exterior doors and cameras in all of the classrooms.