What is Transitional Kindergarten?

Transitional kindergarten is a NEW program that Holy Trinity Lutheran Preschool has adopted, that will be offered to children who have completed a 4 year old program and need another year to develop physically, socially or academically prior to entering kindergarten.  We believe in offering a calm, nurturing environment which these children can be challenged at their individual levels to develop confidence in the skills needed for future success in school. There will be a greater emphasis on one-to-one attention in transitional kindergarten. The majority of the day will be center time. This is a time when the children explore different activities involving fine motor skills, gross motor skills, self-help skills and social skills..all in coordination with the other academic areas.

Holy Trinity Lutheran’s Transitional Kindergarten will serve as a bridge for children who in essence, need the gift of time- time that is essential to absorb and express ideas, learn more about friendships, asset independence and examine the world around them.  This allows the children to become more confident as they move to the next level of academic achievement.

The Transitional Kindergarten program has a comprehensive curriculum that meets the needs of the 5 year old at a pace that has been adapted to best suit their abilities.  As children acquire skills, they advance at their own individual pace to the next level.

Math Curriculum:

• - Hands on exploration
• - Patterns
• - Sorting
• - Classifying
• - Counting
• - Comparing
• - Graphing

 

Language Curriculum
With our language program we encourage the children to develop all of their language skills in a variety of ways. Language comes alive and literacy grows. The program is designed to:

• - Motivate children
• - Facilitate oral development
• - Develop print awareness
• - Teach letters and sounds
• - Promote reading comprehension
• - Develop writing and spelling skills
• - Enhance social development. 

Science Curriculum
With our science program the children will explore, question and experiment with scientific reasoning and inquiry.

• - Observation: Children will become aware of details about the objects in the world around them.
• - Prediction
• - Hypothesis testing
• - Conclusion/Synthesis

The Transitional kindergarten will be set up as a Pre-Kindergarten and Transitional Kindergarten taught by the same teacher.  Small multi-aged cooperative groups will be developmental The program is designed to help children develop the skills necessary to become more successful students in future classroom settings.