Preschool Enrichments

Engaging with art materials is a vital way for children to actively learn about and make sense of their world. Children at the preschool visit a dedicated art studio space and meet with a full time art faculty member to explore methods of creation, materials, and theory often within an art historical context.

Through open-ended exploration, children will be guided through process-based investigations to become acquainted with the qualities and properties of materials.

This in turn helps children to establish the knowledge and understanding necessary to choose materials that will best suit their artistic goals, be them representational or nonrepresentational, both now and in the future.

Topics that emerge from the classrooms are often expanded on and supported by studio work, allowing students to confidently articulate what they are learning through the visual arts. The studio is a wonderful and messy space in which children will become choice-makers as they find their own unique visual voice.

In young children, music and movement is a fundamental means of self-expression. Every child’s natural interest in music is fostered through emphasis on process (rather than product or performance), creating music, music appreciation and musical games. The joy children feel when they first explore sounds and movement is the foundation for a long musical life. Such core concepts as rhythm, melody, and structure are revealed through games and improvisation. Each year, children revisit the concepts they learned during the previous year, adding new skills and deepening their experiences.

Our preschool Spanish curriculum focuses on teaching the children early learning concepts through play. Spanish classes focus mainly on expressive language and aural comprehension. Some (but not all) topics include: colors, shapes, alphabet, numbers, days of the week, months of the year, weather, seasons, greetings and animals. Many of these topics are ones that your children are already working on and familiar with in English and this repetition is the key for young students! Our Spanish specialist, Anneris, creates a fun and safe learning environment through books, songs, movement, discussions and art activities (all in Spanish)!

In Drama class, children play theater games designed to hone skills such as emotional awareness, spatial awareness, interpersonal skills like listening and collaboration, and creative expression of ideas with their bodies and voices. This class has an emergent curriculum which follows where the children’s imaginations lead. Each week the children engage in games that stimulate their creativity, focus their energy, and let them express themselves in fun, new ways. The Kindergarteners create theater together through Creative Drama, a guided dramatic play. Creative Drama is an informal drama that is created by the participants. It may make use of an existing story like a fairytale, or an original story, but it is always an improvised drama with dialogue being created by the players. Lines are not memorized, and it is not done with an audience in mind.