Have you ever wondered what a day in Pre-K looks like at Yellow Brick Road? Maybe, you have heard about our play and interests-based curriculum and you’re wondering how we structure our day with intentional play… We are going to break down our Pre-K daily schedule for you and go through all of the exciting parts of our days in Pre-K!
The beauty of our customized curriculum is that every classroom has a set daily schedule that works for the students in the classroom at the time. If our teachers need to move the day around to include and benefit all of their students, then they can. They have the abilities and support to run the classroom in the way that makes the most sense for their students.
Regardless of how the day is structured, every Pre-K classroom starts out with a morning meeting! In this meeting, teachers discuss everyday topics like letters, numbers, and shapes of the week. They also talk about the themes that are decided based on our students’ interests. Usually, they will read a story and have an open-ended conversation with their students to really get their minds going first thing in the morning!
After the morning meeting concludes, our students will either take their lessons outside first thing or work on indoor activities before ending the morning learning cycle outside! Our students go outside at least twice a day, as long as the weather agrees. Our teachers plan their lessons to incorporate and use the current seasons we are in year-round with our Pre-K students. Involving nature in our curriculum as much as often as we can gives our students an even better understanding of concepts like season changes, weather, and time!
When our children are not learning outside in the morning, they are inside learning through play. Our teachers come up with the most fun activities involving experiments, patterns, letter recognition, shapes, puzzles, and so much more to get our student’s minds working and warmed up!
Of course, as we mentioned in our last blog post, one of the benefits of being a private Pre-K program is that we are able to offer meals and rest time on-site. So, in the middle of the day, we wind down a little bit and have lunch family-style in our classrooms and cafeterias.
After lunch and rest time, our curriculum continues! Our teachers lead afternoon meetings which could consist of books, the weather, show and share, group games, and more. Following the afternoon meetings they play whole-group games, sing and dance together for music and movement, and read books together before going outside again for the afternoon.
And at the end of the day, every day seems to end the same… the children in the Pre-K class are excited and happy. They have learned a lot about numbers, letters, shapes, friendships, and so much more! They had a lot of fun playing together all day long. The teachers are proud of all that the children have accomplished, and they are excited to see what the future holds.
The beauty of our Pre-K classrooms is that while every day has the same schedule, no day is ever the same. There are so many reasons that our students and our teachers get excited to return each day to get together and learn and play and build even more memories before kindergarten!