Pre-Kinder
Preschool Lessons
The pre-kinder curriculum at Treetop Friends focuses on new, important developmental milestones for young children who are about to move up to kindergarten.
There are several milestones we're hoping to see those in our pre-k program achieve during their time at Treetop Friends. These include social-emotional, physical, language, mathematics, science, social studies, and literacy milestones. Our early childhood education curriculum is designed to ensure children can succeed in kindergarten and beyond. From fun childcare activities and lessons to developing social skills, our team is here to help students achieve those specific milestones.
We offer our early childhood education curriculum to daycares, homeschools, and schools. Whether you’re struggling to keep children engaged, create educational activities, or manage your classroom, we have all the proper knowledge and tools to assist you. If you’re interested in learning more about our pre-kinder curriculum, contact a member of our team today. No matter your needs, we’re here to help you create a classroom environment that fosters student engagement!
Social-Emotional Milestones
Social-emotional milestones for pre-k students at Treetop Friends focus on regulating emotions and behaviors, as well as establishing and sustaining positive relationships and participating cooperatively and constructively in group situations.
We specifically help our pre-kinders achieve the following:
- Manage feelings
- Understand hurt feelings
- Follow expectations
- Take care of their own needs
- Understand the concept of sharing
- Verbalize frustration
- Show self-awareness and pride in skills and abilities
- Focus on a single task and complete it
- Help out in the classroom
- Problem solve on their own when there is a conflict with another child, only seeking an adult when necessary
Treetop Friends’ curriculum will help these youngsters establish and sustain positive relationships. Milestones we will be looking to see include the forming of relationships with adults and peers, acknowledging emotional cues of others, demonstrating empathy for others, and playing with peers.
Participating cooperatively and constructively in group situations are important milestones we’re expecting our pre-k students to achieve through our social-emotional curriculum. Evidence of this curriculum working includes being able to sit for an activity for 15-20 minutes, solving social issues, respecting boundaries most of the time, an ability to pay attention and respond appropriately to others, actively seeking out how to be a helper, and understanding how to take turns.
Physical Milestones
As part of our pre-k curriculum
We’re hoping to see our youngsters achieve physical milestones, such as:
- Demonstrating healthy choices
- Fine motor skills
- Gross motor skills
If we’re seeing our pre-kinders demonstrating healthy choices, then we’re seeing them start to practice good hygiene. This includes washing hands, brushing teeth, and having an understanding of germs. They will also have an understanding of why we eat nutritional foods, how to make safe choices with their bodies, the importance of being physically active, and how to maintain healthy physical boundaries with others.
Gross motor skills physical milestones we’re looking for from our pre-k students include a coordination of large movements and a demonstration of strength and balance.
The physical milestones we’re hoping to see from pre-kinders in relation to fine motor skills are a control of small movements with actions such as zipping and buttoning clothes, an ability to cut using scissors, coordination of hand and eye movement (such as pouring liquids), and an ability to hold a pencil in a correct position.
Literacy Milestones
As our kiddos begin to approach kindergarten, we will expect to see certain achievements from them in terms of reading.
The literacy milestones we will help our pre-k students achieve at Treetop Friends include letter and word recognition, as well as a demonstration of writing skills.
The letter and word recognition milestones our youngsters will achieve in the pre-k class include:
- Knowledge of all letter names and sounds
- Phonic rules and knowledge of word structure
- Self-selecting books and other reading material
- Recognition of rhyming words
- Identifying parts of print that have meaning, including end punctuation
- Producing a word that begins with the same sound as a pair of words
- Separating syllables from words
- Engaging in pre-reading and reading-related activities
- Recognition that text has meaning
- Separating a four-word sentence into individual words
- Blending syllables into words
- Re-telling a story after it is read to them
- Asking and responding to questions about a book read aloud
- Describing books by using information learned from them
- Making predictions about text
The writing skills a pre-kinder should be able to demonstrate after being in our curriculum include:
- Tracing letters and numbers on their own
- Realization that words are what is read and not the picture
- Using letters and letter-like forms to replace scribbles
- Telling stories associated with marks on paper
- Noticing when an adult doesn’t say something correctly
- Showing written products to others
Language Milestones
For pre-k students at Treetop Friends, language milestones we are hoping to see enhanced through our curriculum include language development, communication skills, activity engagement, connecting the activity with knowledge, classification skills, and engagement in sociodramatic play.
Language development skills to be learned by pre-kinders at Treetop Friends include listening to and understanding the meaning of language, as well as the ability to follow multistep directions and tell the difference between similar-sounding words.
Communication skills we’re looking to see pre-kinders develop at Treetop Friends include speaking clearly; saying sentences to express thoughts; understanding and expressing social rules during conversations; building advanced vocabulary and using words correctly; using regular and irregular plurals, regular past tense, personal and possessive pronouns, and subject-verb agreement; and combining more than one idea using a complex sentence.
We’re hoping these pre-kinders will show they have become engaged in activities by participating in most activities, sharing detailed ideas, working independently on small tasks, and investigating and demonstrating growing understanding of the sounds and pitches of language.
Our pre-kinders will also show the ability to connect each activity with knowledge by placing some learning concepts into action and understanding most learning concepts by demonstrating them physically and verbally.
Classification skills milestones that our curriculum will help pre-k students reach include the ability to sort objects that are the same and different and using correct terms to describe, as well as the ability to develop a vocabulary of object names and common phrases.
Finally, we’ll begin to see our pre-kinders engage in sociodramatic play by relating instructional learning to imaginary play; demonstrating development in language and social abilities; interacting with others by creating storylines; identifying by name familiar objects, people, and events; and clearly communicating intended meaning.
Mathematics Milestones
The mathematics curriculum at Treetop Friends focuses on spatial relationships, shapes, and using number concepts and operations, money, measurement, patterns, and time.
We will help pre-k students reach milestones in spatial relationships by using multiple concrete and abstract words to describe where an object is located, as well as an ability to flip and rotate objects, an ability to complete age-appropriate puzzles, and an ability to recognize how much can be placed within an object.
The number concepts and operations we’re hoping they will achieve include the ability to count to 100, identify numerals in and out of sequence, connect numerals 1-100 with quantities, add up to 10 concrete objects and create pictorial models, use numerical terms verbally, identify multiple objects without having to count them, use models or verbal word problems to subtract multiple objects from a set, and separate up to 10 items into equal groups.
Pre-kinders at Treetop Friends will also begin to use standard and non-standard forms of measurement, understand that numbers and objects can be bigger and smaller than each other, and compare heights and lengths to identify differences.
The pre-k curriculum at Treetop Friends will also teach our students a basic understanding of how to use money to buy and sell, identifying the name and value of some bills and coins. In addition, these students will develop a basic understanding of why time exists, identifying the difference between hours and minutes and the different parts of a clock.
Finally, our pre-kinders will be able to identify and create patterns.
Social Studies Milestones
Social studies are a close look at the world around us, how we interact with our community, and how we learn about how our world works.
For our pre-k students, we are looking at a few milestones in terms of social studies. These include community, family, history, geography, and culture.
The community milestones we’re hoping our pre-kinders can achieve include an understanding of the roles of community helpers, the meaning of most safety signs, an understanding and respect for differences in people, an ability to connect their life into time, events, and routines, and an ability to identify and create common features in the natural environment.
We’ll also teach our pre-kinders about family and hope they have a knowledge of who is in a family, respecting differences in families, and what their home phone number and address are.
With help from Treetop Friends, pre-kinders will develop a basic knowledge of historical facts and knowledge of important holidays. They will also start to identify continents and oceans, as well as have an understanding of how maps are used.
Finally, we’ll help teach our pre-k students all about culture. We’ll help them identify similarities and differences between classmates, as well as those from their cultures. Our pre-kinders will also be able to identify basic cultural facts and have an understanding of different cultural holidays, languages, food, and more. Pre-kinders will learn to respect cultural differences and realize that all people need food, clothing, and shelter. Our pre-k students will learn to identify the U.S. and Texas flags, as well as recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. and state flags, and how to observe a moment of silence. We’ll also have the students engage in voting as a method of group decision-making.
Science Milestones
Treetop Friends will also focus on developing an understanding of science and scientific skills as a part of our curriculum.
We do have specific scientific milestones in mind for our pre-k students as part of their curriculum and daycare activities. The science milestones we focus on are:
- Use of Tools to Observe and Explore
- Earth’s Environment
- Characteristics of Living Organisms
- Physical Properties of Objects and Materials
- How to Use Scientific Inquiry Skills
- Space
We will expect our pre-kinders to use their bodies to explore the world around them. Our pre-k students will demonstrate knowledge of scientific tools and their proper use. They will also understand how to organize information and items, as well as how to display them visually.
Our pre-kinders will begin to understand the earth’s environment by understanding different types of weather and climates. They will demonstrate knowledge of ecosystems and an ability to observe, discuss, and compare earth materials. They should also be able to identify, observe, and discuss objects in the sky. Their observations and discussions should also include what happens during changes in the earth and sky. They will also know the importance of caring for our environment and planet.
Pre-k students will continue to learn about the characteristics of living organisms. We will hope to see them understand the basic needs of living things and most basic healthy habits. They will also observe and discuss the growth of living things and understand the difference between living and non-living. Also, pre-kinders will be able to identify additional internal organs.
The scientific milestones pre-k students will begin to reach also include the physical properties of objects and materials. They will be able to understand the different movements of objects and materials. Pre-kinders will also have a basic understanding of matter and weight, as well as an ability to use sensory language to describe objects and materials. They will know how to observe, investigate, discuss, and describe sources of energy such as light, heat, and electricity.
We will continue to see our pre-kinders reach milestones in the use of scientific inquiry skills as they will be able to ask a question and predict an outcome, as well as observe, evaluate, and record data during an activity.
Finally, pre-k students will expand their understanding of space. This will include a knowledge of the elements of Earth, an understanding of what the moon does to Earth, the ability to name three planets, and knowledge of space objects.