Curriculum Overview

Preschool and Pre-k

This class is for students 3-5 years old. Students at UCiC will spend two years in our preschool/pre-k class allowing them to bond with their classmates and teacher on a deeper level. Science has shown that children who have a strong bond with their caregivers lead to higher self-esteem, better emotional regulation skills, and even perform better academically throughout their lives. 

Our curriculum for this class changes yearly to keep things fresh and exciting for our students. Preschool and pre-k will spend time growing their worldview by learning about different cultures, periods of history, natural habitats, and big science topics such as weather, volcanos, and space. They will spend time in pretend play and growing their imaginations through art, dress-up, and story time. 

We will demonstrate our understanding by completing projects throughout the year such as creating birdhouses, box cars, model planets, a recycling project, and more!

Each week our students will build their writing abilities by using the Learning Without Tears workbook curriculum. Preschool students will be using “My First School Book” while Pre-k students will be using “Kick Start Kindergarten”. This is a long-used handwriting program that teaches students how to form letters from their shapes which increases letter recognition and better reading comprehension skills. You will notice that we do not teach letters in alphabetical order, instead we teach letters by their shape. We start with letters using straight lines, then curved lines, and lastly diagonal lines. By learning the shapes of letters, students learn to build letters on their own and gain more confidence in writing freehand. 

Here at UCiC we want to create joy in learning. We make math time fun through themed games, puzzles, group activities and more. Some math skills we will develop are number recognition, counting one-to-one correspondence, shape recognition, patterns, measurement, graphing, and simple addition and subtraction (if students are showing readiness). 

Preschool and pre-k students get to enjoy weekly art class, music class, chapel and monthly science class, gardening, social-emotional learning, and book club.