PreKindergarten is a half-day program offering quality early childhood education for four year olds, during their year before Kindergarten. At Linwood Monroe Arts Plus PreKindergarten we aim to provide our students with the foundational academic and social skills to be successful in Kindergarten.

We believe that the pathways to learning are many and varied. Our students have the opportunity to express their learning and understanding on a daily basis through the ARTS.

Our students learn through both active play and structured group times. Conceptual learning is linked directly to the experience of our students and organized in monthly units/areas of study to promote vocabulary development and rich exploration. The daily classroom schedule follows the Early Childhood Workshop model, and is listed below.

We intentionally arrange the physical space of the classroom to encourage conversations and relationships between children and teachers. We support each child’s natural curiousity and desire to explore, experiment, theorize, and collaborate by offering interesting natural and manufactured materials.

New in 2014-15

We have two early childhood classrooms providing rich ARTS based learning. Classes have a maximum of 20 children.

1. PreKindergarten Co-Taught Classroom

AM and PM classes are taught by 2 teachers (1 regular education and 1 special education) and 2 teaching assistants (1 regular education and 1 special education). AM class meets from 9:30am-12:00pm. PM class meets from 1:30-4:00pm. Classes meet 5 days a week.

2. PreKindergarten PM class

We added an additional PM class in a second classroom. This group has 1 regular education teacher and 1 regular education teaching assistant. This class meets from 1:30 – 4:00pm, 5 days a week.

Curriculum:

All PreK classes follow the same curriculum, “Discovering Our World”. The St. Paul Public Schools PreKindergarten teachers, coaches, parent educators and administrators wrote this curriculum. The units/areas of study are listed below.

• The First Six Weeks in My New School
• Exploring Change in My World
• Being Healthy in Our World
• Adapting to Our World
• Helping in Our World
• Creating and Constructing in Our World
• Cycles in Our World