In the full-day King Open kindergarten classes, children learn
through individual and group play and pre-academic activities and
projects.
- Teachers focus the children’s attention on the natural world and on the social world of the classroom, school, and home.
- Children begin the TERC investigations curriculum, using manipulatives such as pattern blocks to explore numbers and patterns.
- Language and literacy work includes reading classroom print,
speaking in front of the lass, drawing and captioning pictures to make
books, dictating or writing stories, acting in plays and puppet shows,
and reading and listening to books. Children who enter kindergarten
knowing how to read are given opportunities to read books at their
level.
- Kindergarten classrooms have a variety of play and re-academic
areas, such as blocks, sand, drama, writing area, math manipulatives,
computer, cooking, painting, science observations, pets, or puzzle
areas.
- Units focus on topics within the experience of young children, such as families or butterflies.
The social justice emphasis of the school begins in kindergarten, as
children learn how to be a good friend, how to be fair, how to assert
themselves appropriately, how to resolve conflicts with communication,
and how to empathize with others.