C5 provides your child and your family with a comprehensive Pre-K program. For over 20 years, since C5 began implementing its comprehensive philosophy and practices, C5 children have been going on to kindergarten as powerful individual learners and successful group members. They have high degrees of self-confidence, self-sufficiency, and self-esteem. They also have critical thinking and problem-solving skills, work exceptionally well in groups, and typically meet and exceed all of the standard academic and social requirements for kindergarten.
We report frequently on classroom and individual learning group activities and progress and convey that information to you on our private website and in-person. There are also many opportunities for regular parent and family member involvement in line with each one’s interest, availability, and resources.
Our daily work with your child is influenced in part by the California Department of Education Preschool Learning Foundations and related materials. Our program provides much more.
However, the foundations outline key competencies, including the attitudes, skills, and knowledge, that most children can achieve when provided with the kinds of interactions, instruction, and environments that research has shown to promote early learning and development. They are found in abundance at C5 Children’s School.
The foundations can also provide early childhood educators, parents, and the public with a clear understanding of the wide range of capabilities that preschool children can typically attain when given the benefits of a high-quality preschool program.
We work closely with you and your other family members to help you to better understand what to expect from public and private kindergartens and what those schools expect from children graduating from C5. We work with you and a calendar throughout the year for the various activities related to these expectations.
An historical review of our many years of experience at C5 includes the fact that the public and private school kindergartens greatly appreciate C5’s program and its graduating children and their families, because of our comprehensive and unique program, the preparation that our children receive, the parent participation that parents have contributed, and the rich thorough documentation of it all that families have and can provide.
Here are a Few of Our Pre-K Curriculum Components and Approaches
Here are a Few of Our Pre-K Curriculum Components and Approaches
Respectful: Relating to your child as an equal; while in full appreciation of their powers as a learner, influence as a classroom community member, and potential as a friend and contributor to the learning and development of other children, the staff and other adults, the school, and the broad community
Friendly: Connecting to your child and being considerate, nurturing, gentle, caring, energized, and unfailingly positive
Safe: Providing safe and secure environments, materials, processes, and relationships that support powerful learning and development experiences
Emotionally Accessible: Being so at all times, including during difficulties; continually relating respectfully to your child as an equal partner in a caring and skillful manner
Facilitating Learning: Guiding on and adapting to your child to assist in co-constructing optimal learning experiences and your child making meaning that is powerful, important to them, integrated into their life, and long lasting
Community of Learners: Enhancing your child’s sense of membership in the learning group and implications for action; skills, attitudes, and knowledge involved in being an effective group member; support for peers and peer tutoring; attending to inclusion, understanding, appreciation, sharing power and influence; working toward individual and group goals and objectives; accomplishing desired aims; and renewing as a group
Emergent Curriculum: What comes from your child becomes the curriculum. For example, their inclinations, interests, fascinations, aspirations, temperament, learning styles; and, their current social, emotional, cognitive, and physical state; and, their capacities, family cultures, etc. This provides automatic motivation, sustained energy, and a powerful sense that they are the primary agent of their ongoing learning and development
100 Languages of Children: Introducing and developing a very wide range of materials, processes, tools, equipment, environments, concepts, etc. for exploration and expression; engaging variety in scope, scale, depth, and complexity of investigations and projects
Emphasis on Diversity: Recognizing, featuring, appreciating, and utilizing diversity in its many forms, such as in our bodies, brains, multiple intelligences, learning styles, attitudes, perspectives, approaches, materials, tools, processes, equipment, environments, languages, concepts, and cultures
Love of Learning: Finding and promoting joy in everything; attending to the climate in the group and program; celebrating discoveries, learning, participation, efforts, contributions, failings, and accomplishments
Resource Acquisition: Children will develop skills, attitudes, and knowledge about identifying and obtaining a wide range of internal and external resources. Examples are items within the classroom, center, and building; tapping peers; recruiting parents and family members; calling in individuals with experience, ideas, and expertise from the community; going to books and online for information, perspective, and channels to other resources; cultivating positive, productive attitudes and emotional intelligence; etc.
Language: Listening; developing word familiarity and vocabulary; speaking; telling stories; rhyming; singing; presenting; experiencing books and other language-related items and materials
Literacy: Recognizing and developing symbol systems, including letters; reading; experiencing books; writing names; finding and making literary elements in the environment and in life
Math*: Counting; measuring; sorting; working with relationships, patterns, groupings, shapes, and applying to understanding and solving problems in the environment and life
Science*: Observing; questioning; hypothesizing; exploring; testing; documenting; engaging natural and artificial aspects; concluding, and examining implications for living
Engineering*: Envisioning, collaborating, designing, representing, presenting, negotiating, calculating, prototyping, assembling, problem-solving, correcting, evaluating, reporting
Arts*: Graphics; music; drama; sculpture; photography; film making; concepts; elements; aesthetics; expressions; influence
Technologies*: Historic; current; tools; equipment; materials; properties; impacts; appropriate selection; and, usage
Self and Social: Self-orientation; social skills; group effectiveness; roles; responsibilities; feelings; attitudes; beliefs; and scope of effects
Physical: Basic large and fine movements; balance; awareness of body, space, directions; coordinate with others; variable active, strong, flexible, and creative
* Components of the STEAM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) that are embedded in the C5 approach.
Calypso — A pre-kindergarten learning group documented their five month making of a 3 foot wide 10 foot long 3 foot high cardboard version of Jacques Cousteau’s fully outfitted Calypso research vessel in their classroom that they occupied each day for four months. They also simulated the Calypso’s first scientific voyage to the Great Barrier Reef with all of them on board. They amassed information on the ship, crew, their research methods and equipment, its mission and activities, discoveries, and how Cousteau and crew reported their experiences to the world. Many of these aspects were replicated by the children and carried over into their other daily activities and later projects.
Race Cars — One pre–kindergarten learning group of eight children developed an interest in race cars that evolved into a comprehensive project that lasted several months. It began with a fascination with fast model cars; grew with exploration into a focus on NASCAR drivers and their individual cars. They drew cars, made models, investigated the dimensions of the cars and their parts, and gathered statistics about the engines, wheels, frames, and speeds. The group continued with research and built a 3’x3′ replica of the Daytona race track with grandstands, pits, infield, and mechanics row. Parents and family members participated throughout the project with stories of their driving; with some who had raced. Several brought in materials, pictures of racing, books, and web addresses for more information. The children viewed videos of the track, races, and pit crews and wanted to be a pit crew. Further study led to them practicing to be a professional pit crew with the guidelines they learned about being Smart, Strong, Flexible, Fast, and Working as Team. They built a workout area in the classroom and lifted weights that they made from a 2′ dowel and CDs on the ends. They visited the Federal Building health club; met with the personal trainer, who coached them through exercises and additional tips on how to use their pit crew guidelines to be successful. Their teacher and parents took them on a field trip to the Napa race track where they were invited to go into the pits and met their favorite NASCAR driver, who talked with them and signed their race programs.
Jungle Terrarium — The children created a large enclosed jungle-scape and populated it with animals that they created to represent the wide range of their interests and of the diversity of animals in a typical jungle.
Many Others — In a similar fashion, there are many other in-depth Pre-K projects with great stories that lasted for months. A few examples are:
If you have any unique requests or general questions regarding our pre-kindergarten program in San Francisco, CA, you are welcome to contact us today!
If you have any unique requests or general questions regarding our pre-kindergarten program in San Francisco, CA, you are welcome to contact us today!