We take our preschool students on a 18 week journey that will prepare your child for kindergarten and give them a significant boost and advantage when they enter kindergarten.
Preschool students meet regularly with the same credentialed and experienced instructor. Because the sessions are two hours long, we use short, fun, engaging games and hands-on activities to teach each concept.
During each session, our preschool students learn the following skills and concepts:
1. Phonemic Awareness: students practice oral segmentation of the beginning, middle and end sounds; oral blending of beginning, middle and end sounds; rhymes, syllabication, and basic listening comprehension.
2. Letter Sounds and Symbols: students will learn letter sounds and symbols; make a personal tactile alphabet book to take home; and, a variety of engaging letter activities to help students isolate the letter-of-the day in the words they read and say. Students learn two letters each week.
3. Word Families and Rhymes: students will learn one word family per week. They learn what rhyming is and what word families are through Hungry Ants. In this activity, the students blend all the consonant letters with word endings. The ants will only eat words that rhyme. Students then build a book of rhymes to take home and study.
4. High Frequency Words: students will learn the high frequency words required by the California State Standards for kindergarten. Students learn three to five new sight words each week through a variety of hands-on activities and games.
5. Literary Analysis: our teachers read a Book-of-the-Week. Instead of simply reading for entertainment, we use the proprietary Bridges Box-of-Talk(tm) to engage students in critical thinking, creative thinking and dialogue.
6. Writing: students practice the standard penmanship for forming capital and lower case letters. They learn that there is a correct spelling; but, they also learn the concept of phonetic spelling (sounding words out). Also, students begin formulating complete sentences. They learn the rules of writing outlined in the California Writing Standards for kindergarten.
7. Vocabulary: students are exposed to higher level vocabulary words through dialogue and read alouds. Students will learn content words, sensory detail words, synonyms of common words such as happy or sad.
After students have finished our preschool program and are successful emergent readers, they are welcome to continue by moving up to our kindergarten program.
Kindergarten Readiness
We take our preschool students on a 18 week journey that will prepare your child for kindergarten and give them a significant boost and advantage when they enter kindergarten.
Preschool students meet regularly with the same credentialed and experienced instructor. Because the sessions are two hours long, we use short, fun, engaging games and hands-on activities to teach each concept.
During each session, our preschool students learn the following skills and concepts:
1. Phonemic Awareness: students practice oral segmentation of the beginning, middle and end sounds; oral blending of beginning, middle and end sounds; rhymes, syllabication, and basic listening comprehension.
2. Letter Sounds and Symbols: students will learn letter sounds and symbols; make a personal tactile alphabet book to take home; and, a variety of engaging letter activities to help students isolate the letter-of-the day in the words they read and say. Students learn two letters each week.
3. Word Families and Rhymes: students will learn one word family per week. They learn what rhyming is and what word families are through Hungry Ants. In this activity, the students blend all the consonant letters with word endings. The ants will only eat words that rhyme. Students then build a book of rhymes to take home and study.
Some of the word families in our curriculum are:
Short Vowels: -at, -ap, -an, -ad, -ip, -in,-ig,-it, -op,-ot, -en, -et, -ug, ub
Long Vowels: -ake, -ick, -ail, -oat, -ute, -ee
4. High Frequency Words: students will learn the high frequency words required by the California State Standards for kindergarten. Students learn three to five new sight words each week through a variety of hands-on activities and games.
5. Literary Analysis: our teachers read a Book-of-the-Week. Instead of simply reading for entertainment, we use the proprietary Bridges Box-of-Talk(tm) to engage students in critical thinking, creative thinking and dialogue.
6. Writing: students practice the standard penmanship for forming capital and lower case letters. They learn that there is a correct spelling; but, they also learn the concept of phonetic spelling (sounding words out). Also, students begin formulating complete sentences. They learn the rules of writing outlined in the California Writing Standards for kindergarten.
7. Vocabulary: students are exposed to higher level vocabulary words through dialogue and read alouds. Students will learn content words, sensory detail words, synonyms of common words such as happy or sad.
After students have finished our preschool program and are successful emergent readers, they are welcome to continue by moving up to our kindergarten program.
Please also see our program goals for the Bridges Kindergarten Readiness Program that correlate with the California Content Standards.
Please email us at info@brwi.org or call us at (949) 651-1075 to schedule a free assessment or to register for classes!