Kinder Kids International Preschool HAWAII

Our Numeracy curriculum incorporates many concepts and teaching techniques from all over the world. including concepts from Japan, Singapore and New Zealand.

We teach content including numbers, calculations, measurement (including reading the time and calendars), patterns, sorting, chance and data, and spatial sense.

We have a structured Numeracy curriculum, but we also understand that learning arises constantly from events, happenings, play, and routines that occur naturally within the early childhood learning environment.

We encourage teachers to take their lead from the children and their interests and to use the opportunities that arise in the context of their play to strengthen children's mathematical understandings.

We also recognize the importance of following up on children's responses to provoke mathematical thinking. For example, asking children to describe and explain their thinking helps them to clarify their own ideas and gives us insight into their current understandings.

Numeracy work is always supplemented by visual aids and by using concrete materials. We understand the importance of giving children a solid foundation in math, so we make sure each concept is clear and enjoyable by including a lot of games and activities to aid in the learning process.

Providing a literacy rich environment for children in their early years will create the foundation for the children's future reading and writing ability.

In our Toddler age groupe we introduce the concept of individual reading and group reading time. Using our specifically developed Sight Word Staters the children are intoroduced to pre-reading skills and concepts.

We take care to stock our schools with high quality picture books-both fiction and non-fiction. We provide a lending library of level readers for our older classes, and make sure that story time is part of our daily routine.

Our Literacy program has been developed by Kinder Kids professional teaching staff.
We believe that by introducing components of reading and writing through games and songs, that children can develop skills and confidence at an early age.

Our program is based on two key components, synthetic phonics and sight words.

Phonics

We have an original phonics system with cute, easy-to-remember characters for each phonetic sound. The characters and their associated stories and songs make it easier for the children to remember the sounds. From our Kinder 1 year, children begin reading level readers and find instant success due to their strong phonics base. This builds confidence and ensures enjoyment in the reading process. Our class levels are also named offer our characters.

Busy Bee, Running Rabbit, Juggling Jellyfish, Pilot Peguin, Dancing Dinosaur

• Busy Bee
• Running Rabbit
• Juggling Jellyfish
• Pilot Peguin
• Dancing Dinosaur

Children also experience early success in spelling with our structured introduction to sounds and words. This helps when they produce their own compositions as they are soon able to write easily decodable spellings and communicate through their writing.

Sight Words

A sight word is a word that frequently occurs in literature and cannot necessarily be decoded using phonics skills alone. At Kinder Kids, we choose to teach children a set of words to read from memory. This increases their reading efficiency, and therefore their confidence.

Our Kinder Kids Sight Words list was compiled after a careful study of two existing lists: The Dolch List (which catalogues the most commonly occurring words in children's literature) and the Fry List (which referenced all branches of English literature). This research was then combined with our years of teaching experience to assemble the Kinder List. In our list, certain words have been coupled together, e.g. 'these' and 'those', 'when' and 'if' to help children to compare and contrast the spelling and meaning of these words.

In addition to the phonics and sight words elements of our Literacy curriculum, we also have a Handwriting program for practicing letter formation. This program begins in Toddler Class with manipulation of play dough and other fine motor skills exercises, followed by tracing lines and shapes. From Kinder 1 the children begin to engage in focused writing practice.

Children learn to apply these phonics, sight words, handwriting, and sentence building skills by writing compositions in their journals. We are very proud of the level that the children can achieve and of their enjoyment of the writing process.

Our theme curriculum is designed to expose children to a wide range of concepts and vocabulary. It features many social studies and science based lessons. We start with the familiar and over their years at Kinder Kids we build upon the knowledge from the previous year to increase the children’s understanding of content.

We learn using books, songs, art & craft, cooking, science, exploration and imaginative play as regular parts of the learning process.
Below is an example of the way our theme curriculum progresses over the years at Kinder Kids:

Social Skills are any skills that facilitate interaction and communication with others. Life skills relate to those skills that are necessary for a child to be able to deal with the challenges in everyday life.

In the teaching of both sets of skills we use encouragement and positive reinforcement to help guide the children. Both social skills and life skills are an integral part of the educational experience. Therefore, we take opportunities to refine these skills in real situations as they occur. We also provide the children with a range of opportunities to apply their skills, including free play time, drama, role play, and team based games and activities.

Fine Motor Skills are the skills required to provide strength and control for the muscles in our hands.

We provide a wide range of fun activities to help children to further refine these skills.
As they practice Fine Motor Skills, children are learning to squeeze, rip, pinch, and manipulate various materials. Eventually, they will use these skills to become more adept at life skills such as dressing, undressing, eating with utensils, and using tools such as crayons, paintbrushes, scissors, and pencils.

At times, Fine Motor Skills activities will naturally tie in to our Numeracy curriculum to provoke and develop mathematical thinking. Manipulating materials such as play dough, buttons, and snaps help develop muscles in the children's hands and also build on their spatial sense.

During Fine Motor Skills we encourage teachers to take their lead from the children's interests and use the opportunities that arise in the context of play to strengthen children's mathematical understandings.

Gross Motor Skills are the skills required to move the large muscles of our bodies. This is the first step in muscle development and coordination for young children.

As they practice Gross Motor Skills through a variety of activities, they are gaining skills such as balance, spatial awareness, laterality (the difference between left and right), and awareness of their body's position and its movement capabilities.