This is an extra hour of learning either before school for the afternoon children or after school for the morning children. This one hour additional learning opportunity is designed to build upon the skills they are learning in class and get them acquainted with eating lunch at school. The Three Year Old activities are literature based; the Fours are math and science related. There is an additional $15 fee per day for this program.
Four’s/Five’s Kindergarten Readiness Class
Monday, Wednesday, Friday
9:00am—2:45pm
Lisa Charpentier and Alicia Patel are the teachers of our all day class. Lisa has a B.S. in Education from Kent State with a major in Hearing Impaired, Special Education K-12. She also did post-graduate studies at Kent as a Mild/Moderate Intervention Specialist and has been a teacher here since 2006. Alicia holds a B.A. in Early Childhood Education from Youngstown State University and a Master’s in Education from Marygrove College. She has been teaching here since 2016.
Children arrive at 9:00 a.m. and begin their day in Mrs. Patel’s class. From 11:30 until 12:15 they attend Lunch Time Learning. Children bring their own lunches. At 12:15 they proceed to Mrs. Charpentier’s classroom and dismissal is at 2:45 p.m.
The teachers plan their units reflecting the Early Learning Development Standards provided by the State of Ohio as well as standards from the Cleveland Diocese. Most of the units are similar, but the way they approach the topics and the activities, songs and stories the children take part in are different. There may be a special project that is repeated in both classrooms and the child is given the choice to do it again or pick a different activity. An example would be when both classes do a transportation book. An all day student is allowed to decide if they would like to come to the project table and do it again. Many times they want to do it a second time but drawing different pictures and narrating a different story to the teacher. If they decline they can pick from the other centers that are new to them for that period.
The teachers’ approach to teaching letters, sounds and numbers are similar, but may be in a different order.
There are some “Special Fun Days” during the year that the classes do together. Grocery Day, Twas the Night Before Christmas and Beach Day are some examples. On those days, the classes do a group learning day around a topic and emersion learning will occur.
Both teachers collaborate with assessing the progress of each child. Two conferences are held each year—one in the fall and one in early spring.
The children who have attended this extended day option have greatly benefited from learning how to be with another teacher and experience transitioning through an all day program. They learn how to make new friends and how to learn in different learning environments.