Porcupine (ages 5-6 years)

In this level, we increase our focused academic period from one morning session to a session in the morning and a session in the afternoon as the students’ ability to sit and focus more throughout the day increases. We provide a focused study time for math, science, geography and physical education. We also continue our study of sight words and sounding out words and begin working on reading sentences. We start to encourage the students to challenge reading short stories on their own and provide a small library of leveled reader for this purpose. During our daily core skills block we will use books, games, songs, and manipulatives to help enhance the learning process. We encourage the children to discuss concepts behind the different themed vocabulary words each week and ask questions about them. We also allow them to talk about own experiences with and feelings about things that happen throughout the day.

We have weekly themes that cover a large variety of subjects. These themes include: body parts, emotions, family, clothes, school, in the home, food, fruit, vegetables, nature, playground, farm animals, ocean animals, zoo animals, transportation, and shapes. In addition to these themes we also have themes that will be done at least once during the year. Seasons and hygiene are examples of such themes. For each of these themes we have a set of corresponding vocabulary, images, songs, and activities to help the children to be able to remember them.

Social skills for preschoolers are dependent on three different abilities; emotional self-control, empathy, and verbal communication. At Hisaya International Preschool we base our social skills set on these three areas, helping to guide the children to become socially competent and able to flourish in social settings.

Throughout the year we will be using different texts to compliment the learning we are doing in the classroom. In addition to the following texts we will also be using worksheets from various educational websites.