Early Childhood
At Metropolitan School, we recognize that Early Childhood students learn about the world through play, exploration, and meaningful interactions that foster curiosity and growth.
Early Childhood
Curriculum
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Pre-K
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KG1
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KG2
Pre-K Curriculum
Our Pre-K program emphasizes hands-on, child-directed learning experiences that foster creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. Utilizing the Creative Curriculum, which is a comprehensive, research-based curriculum for early childhood education, our students' play-based activities are integrated into daily routines to promote exploration, problem-solving, and social interaction. The curriculum includes ongoing assessment tools and strategies to monitor children's progress and identify individual strengths and areas for growth. Our Pre-K is a rich and stimulating learning environment where children can explore, discover, and develop essential skills and knowledge that will prepare them for future success in school and beyond.
In ELA, the focus is on introducing young children to language and literacy. The curriculum encourages exploration, creativity, and play as essential components of early literacy development. Activities such as exposure to books and stories, early phonemic awareness and phonics instruction, vocabulary development, oral language development, and basic concepts of print are taught. We provide our students with a supportive and enriching environment that fosters a love for language and lays the foundation for future literacy skills. The emphasis is on creating a literacy-rich environment where students are actively engaged in meaningful language experiences that lay the foundation for future reading and writing skills.
In Math, students get introduced to foundational math concepts in a hands-on and developmentally appropriate way. This may include activities such as counting, basic operations, measurement, and spatial awareness. The goal is to provide young children with a solid foundation in mathematical concepts and skills, setting the stage for future mathematical learning and achievement.
Science is incorporated through science-themed books, poems, songs, and storytelling. Reading aloud and discussing scientific concepts in context enhances children's understanding and vocabulary development.
In PreK we also offer other content areas such as Arabic, PE, Music, and Art.
KG1 Curriculum
Our KG1 curriculum focuses on providing students with an engaging and comprehensive educational experience across various subject areas. The curriculum integrates literacy, math, science, social studies, and arts into thematic units or topics that capture children's interests and promote active learning. These themes may cover a wide range of subjects, such as animals, plants, community helpers, seasons, or transportation. For example, a unit on animals might include activities related to literacy (reading and writing about animals), math (counting animal pictures), science (learning about animal habitats), and arts (creating animal crafts). The curriculum emphasizes hands-on, experiential learning activities that allow children to explore concepts and ideas through sensory experiences, experiments, and projects.
ELA in KG1 incorporates activities and experiences to support language and literacy development, including storytelling, read-alouds, writing activities, and vocabulary development related to the theme of each unit. Students typically begin to develop foundational skills in language, reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This may include activities such as learning letter recognition, phonics, basic vocabulary, comprehension skills, and simple writing exercises. The focus is on building a strong foundation for future literacy and communication skills.
Math concepts are introduced and reinforced through hands-on activities, games, and manipulatives connected to the thematic units. These might include activities related to counting, sorting, patterns, shapes, and measurement.
The curriculum provides opportunities for students to explore Science concepts (e.g., observing nature, investigating simple experiments) and social studies concepts (e.g., learning about different cultures, communities, and traditions) within the context of the thematic units.
Our KG1 curriculum encourages artistic expression and creativity through art projects, music, movement, and drama activities that relate to the themes being studied. Arabic is also offered.
Technolgy Integration: Our cutting-edge approach combines the adaptive learning platform of IXL, the rich content resources of McGraw Hill, and rigorous standard-based assessment tools. Through this integration, we pave the way for tailored learning journeys, catering to diverse student needs while ensuring alignment with educational standards.
Assessment: By implementing rigorous standard-based assessments and reporting practices, we empower educators, students, and parents to track progress, set goals, and make informed decisions to drive continuous improvement and ensure the success of every learner.
KG2 Curriculum
KG2 ELA
In KG2, we provide our students with a comprehensive literacy curriculum that addresses all aspects of literacy instruction, including reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The curriculum is designed to help kindergarten students develop the foundational skills they need to become proficient readers and writers. Students demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print such as following words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page; students understand that words are separated by spaces in print and recognize and name all upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet. Foundational literacy skills such as phonemic awareness and phonics are reinforced in activities and games to develop understanding of letter-sound relationships, blending, and segmenting sounds. Understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes) is emphasized through the recognition and production of rhyming word, segmenting and blending of syllables and isolation of the initial, medial and final sounds in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words and by reading common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).
Writing in kindergarten uses a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is . . .), composing informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events.
Math
In KG2, math instructional time focuses on students knowing number names and the count sequence, counting to tell the number of objects, comparing numbers, understanding addition as putting together and adding to, and understanding subtraction as taking apart and taking from. Also, students describe their physical world using geometric ideas and vocabulary. Students identify, name, and describe basic two-dimensional shapes, such as squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, and hexagons, and three-dimensional shapes such as cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres.
Science
In KG2, students formulate answers to questions such as: “What happens if you push or pull an object harder? Where do animals live and why do they live there? What is the weather like today and how is it different from yesterday? Students are expected to develop understanding of patterns and variations in local weather and the purpose of weather forecasting to prepare for, and respond to, severe weather. Students can apply an understanding of the effects of different strengths, or different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of an object to analyze a design solution. Students are also expected to develop understanding of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive and the relationship between their needs and where they live.
KG Entrepreneurship
Our Entrepreneurship program introduces KG2 students to the intersection of financial literacy and early elementary grades social studies learning objectives. Through hands-on classroom activities, the learning experience provides students with an introduction to personal economics and the choices consumers make to meet their needs and wants.
Our KG2 encourages artistic expression and creativity through art projects, music, movement, and drama activities that relate to the themes being studied. Arabic and SEL (Social Emotional Learning) are also offered.
Technolgy Integration: Our cutting-edge approach combines the adaptive learning platform of IXL, the rich content resources of McGraw Hill, and rigorous standard-based assessment tools. Through this integration, we pave the way for tailored learning journeys, catering to diverse student needs while ensuring alignment with educational standards.
Assessment: By implementing rigorous standard-based assessments and reporting practices, we empower educators, students, and parents to track progress, set goals, and make informed decisions to drive continuous improvement and ensure the success of every learner. Students also sit for MAP tests 3 times a year. MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) is a normed, adaptive and standardized test from NWEA designed to measure students' academic progress and growth in various subjects like mathematics, reading, and language usage.
At our school, we believe that every child deserves a positive and supportive transition experience as they move from kindergarten to grade 1. With a focus on building on foundations, academic readiness, social-emotional support, fostering independence, family engagement, and celebrating milestones, we ensure that each student feels prepared, empowered, and excited for the adventures that await them in grade 1
