Pre-K

About the program: Hoosic Valley has two full day (8:30 - 1:30) pre-kindergarten classrooms. Our community is very lucky to have this service available! Not only is it an amazing school experience for the children, but it is also free of charge for the family! This program is funded through a NYS grant.  

How can you get your child in the program: There are only two qualifications your children need to sign up for pre-k. You must live in the Hoosic Valley District, and your child must turn four by December 1st.  The children are picked for this program through a lottery system.  The sign up period generally starts in March and goes to May. We try and pick who is in the program by June. This is a general time frame, because many times we need to make sure our funding is still available before picking the classes. The lottery drawing is completely at random. The names literally all go into a hat and the names are picked. Families will be contacted in order of being picked; all the registered children are given a number for the waiting list. If someone decides not to take a spot or backs out, the next person on the waiting list gets called to get into the program.

What is an integrated classroom?

One Pre-K class is an integrated classroom, which means that there is a mixture of students with special needs and “typical” peers. Typical is the term that is generally used to describe children who are not in special education, but we use it in quotes because each child is different. Each child learns in their own way, so no child is necessarily typical. The integrated classroom has three teachers, which allows us to provide more one on one attention, and extra support to the children who may need it. We also have specialists who come in to provide additional services. Some of the service providers are speech therapists, OT and PT therapists, social workers, and etc. It is not unusual for one of the specialist to do an activity with the whole class, which is great because then everyone benefits from the activity! At any given time if you walked into our classroom you wouldn’t be able to tell who the children with special needs are and who the “typical” peers are. Everyone is treated equally and everyone in our classroom learns to accept each other’s differences. This creates an extremely compassionate classroom and a great learning environment for all!

Pre - K Learning Objectives

ELA:
* Alphabet letters A-Z
-letter recognition
-letter formation
-letter sounds
* Sight Words
- recognize 5 out of the 15 words introduced
* Phonemic Awareness
- introduction to syllables and rhyming words
-beginning sounds
-concepts of print (know what an author & illustrator do for the book, holding the book correctly, turning the pages in the right direction, left to right directionality)
* Writing
-first and last name
-tracing and copying of words and sentences
-interactive writing (charts, class books)
* Literature
-read alouds
-author studies
-sight word books for beginning readers

SCIENCE:
- life cycle
-5 sense
-dental health
-personal safety
-farm animals
-magnets
-sinks & floats
-weather/seasons
-ocean life
-hibernation

SOCIAL STUDIES:
-school
-community (fire safety, jobs in our community)
-100th day of school
-holidays

SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL:
-interaction with peers and adults (during play, at snack & lunch times)
-creates own play schemes
-independently solves problems (peer conflicts)
-peer relationships

MATH:
- counting (up to 30)
-number formations (up to 10)
-one to one correspondence (up to 15)
-days of the week
-patterning
-shape recognition
-categorizing
-more than, less than
-introduction to graphing

MOTOR/SENSORY:
* Fine Motor:
-pencil grasps
-cutting
-hand muscle strengthening activities (using tongs, play dough)
-hand eye coordination
-writing strokes

* Sensory
- shaving cream
-cleaning out pumpkins
-different materials in sensory table (rice, beans, noodles, coffee, water, snow, etc.)
-five senses

* Gross Motor:
- running
-jumping (landing on two feet)
-walking on a balance beam
-climbing
-galloping/skipping
-throwing and catching a ball
-trunk strengthening activities (riding scooters, sitting without support)


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