Kindergarten Program
Building Skills & Confidence for Life
The HCS Kindergarten program gives our students the opportunity to complete a 3-year cycle of education that began when they were three years old. It is the culmination of everything that the child has learned in the classroom and it provides them the familiar approach and style that allows each individual child the priceless opportunity to reach his/her potential. The life skills, confidence, independence, and academic foundation that HCS focuses on providing will last a lifetime.
Our curriculum includes:
Mathematics
The mathematical foundation that a Montessori based program provides is second to none.
Here is a list of the concepts covered in the Kindergarten year: Attribute Sorting and Classifying ,Writing Numerals, Linear and Skip Counting, Quantity/Symbol Relationship, Concepts of Addition and Subtraction, Introduction to Arithmetic Facts, Fractions, Measurement, Geometric Nomenclature (2 and 3 Dimensional), and Introduction to the Decimal System
Sciences
Connecting students to the world around them through the scientific method provides children an opportunity to understand how they can have a positive and negative impact on the natural world.
Our curriculum includes:
Life science (living/non-living, plants and animals), Zoology (nomenclature, external characteristics and habitats), Botany (life cycle and nomenclature), Biology (the human body, nutrition), Physical Science (environmental education, including appreciation of and responsibility for the natural environment), Chemistry (physical properties and attributes), Earth science, and the weather.
What does our Kindergarten program look like?
“This month we are learning about narrative writing. The kindergartners are learning about the difference between personal and fictional narratives, we have been working on our storytelling skills by using illustrations, objects, and sentence starters to help create our stories. In math, students are working on nonstandard and standard measurement. This week the kindergarteners learned how to use rulers to measure objects to the nearest inch.”
Curriculum continued…
Social Studies/Geography/History
Through social studies, geography and history, our students learn that all people are interconnected, and we are all more alike than we are different.
Our curriculum includes: Air/Land/Water (including continents and the Earth), Geography and maps, Cultures (including studying six countries/regions per year and their people, land, symbols, and animals), Fundamental needs of all people, Holiday studies, United States symbols, and the passage of time (days of the week and seasons).
Language Arts
A strong oral and written language foundation leads to future academic success.
Our Language Arts curriculum includes: Phonetic and whole language instruction, listening and speaking skills, vocabulary enrichment, beginning creative writing, sound/symbol relationships and beginning decoding, handwriting, sight words, word study, literature appreciation, reading comprehension, including making predictions, retelling stories, and answering questions, concepts of print (such as parts of a book, title and author, types of text), reading appropriate for individual ability, and reading/writing poetry.
Community Service
Community Service teaches children to think about their surroundings and to express empathy and compassion for others and the environment. It reinforces the idea that acts of kindness, no matter how big or small, can create an impact on our lives as well as affect other people's lives for the better.