Temple
Beth Or
Preschool
General Curriculum - Four-Year Olds
At Temple Beth Or Preschool, the general goal in the four-year-old classrooms is
to prepare students to enter elementary school, understanding that our four-
year-olds are at different stages of development. Learning is fun and hands-on,
with individual assessments conducted to help the teachers understand the
needs of the children and thus be able to appropriately shape classroom
activities.
In the Fours, students build on the skills they began to develop while in the
Threes classes, such as independent thinking, cooperative play, collaborative
work, fine motor skills and good communication. As the year progresses,
students are expected to make more of their own decisions and effectively
articulate their needs and emotions.
Other skills fostered include:
v Recognizing and writing letters and words through the Letterland literacy
program; hearing and discriminating the sounds of language
v Interpreting meanings from books and stories
v Familiarity with the concept of numbers, counting and numeral
recognition
v Asking and answering questions, and actively participating in discussions
v Predicting outcomes based on facts as presented to them
v Learning self-management, such as putting materials in their own cubbies
and preparing to leave the classroom at the end of the school day
v Mastering basic scissor skills
v Awareness of the larger world around them (e.g., a project to raise funds
for Haiti & Chile while teaching the lesson of tzedakah, or caring for the less
fortunate)
Consistent with our play-based approach to the school, children in the Fours
classes are not pressured to perform against academic milestones, but those
expressing interest are afforded opportunities to build on their growing literacy.
The curriculum is intentionally left flexible in order to be responsive to the
children’s interests. For example, at one point during a cold snap, a child asked
why there was ice in a bucket on the playground.
v From there, the class decided to explore the idea of ice, conducting an
experiment to see what would happen when the bucket of ice was
brought inside the classroom.
v They discussed and graphed their predictions, designed and built an igloo,
and draped themselves in fluffy white fabric to pretend to be polar bears.
Little did the kids know how much they were learning!
The overarching goal is to ensure the children are having fun while also
introducing the beginnings of an academic focus so they are familiar with what
will be expected of them both socially and academically in the larger elementary
school environment.
