Christ the King School is blessed to have a preschool program that includes infants through Pre-K four students. The overall benefits of having a Preschool program within an elementary school allow for improving alignment through the elementary years, a smooth transition, and better preparation for Kindergarten. It also offers a sense of community where students can interact and learn in an environment with a strong faith-based foundation.
Children learn to build positive relationships through sensory development, socialization, and cooperative play. The school follows Early Childhood state standards. This means that the staff will help foster language and physical development and social, emotional, and cognitive learning, emphasizing spirituality.
CKS has also embraced the Minds in Motion program for preschool through first grade. Regular exercise strengthens the child’s vestibular system while stimulating visual and auditory processing. Children develop gross and fine motor skills to better prepare for cognitive learning.
We have an early childhood (ages 2-5) playground adjacent to our current playground, which provides developmentally appropriate activities for our young children. We also offer our Little Sprouts summer program for preschool through Second Grade.
Pre-K students are introduced to upper- and lower-case letters. We work on letter recognition, letter formation, and letter sounds. Prek-K students are exposed to basic phonemic awareness skills like rhyming production and recognition. Language arts centers are used to facilitate learning.
Pre-K students work on fine motor skills, such as appropriate pencil grip, appropriate stages of drawing/writing, use of scissors, playing with toys that require fine motor agility, and self-care skills. Art projects, learning centers, small group activities, and games are used to practice these skills.
Pre-K students work on gross motor skills, such as throwing a ball forward with accuracy, catching a ball, kicking a ball, bouncing a ball, balancing on one foot, hopping on one foot, galloping, and skipping. Developmental milestones for each age group are fostered through our Minds-in-Motion program that helps strengthen gross motor skills.
Pre-K students work on math skills, such as making patterns, identifying shapes, number recognition, number writing, and making one-to-one correspondence. Manipulatives, games, learning centers, and stories are used to facilitate learning.
Pre-K students participate in daily prayer, weekly religion lessons, learning basic prayers, and practicing correctly making the sign of the cross. Pre-K 4 students attend monthly all-school masses with fifth-grade partners and participate in stewardship projects throughout the year.
Social and emotional skills are one of the most important skills taught in preschool. Social and emotional skills are some of the most important skills that we work on during our Pre-K years. Some of these skills are respect, sharing, taking turns, transitioning, following directions, making good choices, and listening.
Pre-K students work on copying letters and numbers and writing their first and last names. This progressive approach focuses on building basic fine motor skills throughout each year of the program.
