Transitional Kindergarten Program

Glenwood Country Day School's Transitional Kindergarten is a transitional year between Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten. The purpose of Transitional Kindergarten is to give children the extra time they need for development if they are to be successful in school and as total persons.  For developmentally young children, the Transitional Kindergarten class provides the time and space they need to thrive rather than simply survive in school.

A recommendation that a child be place din Transitional Kindergarten class is based on the child's developmental age, not chronological age. School success is based more on developmental age than on any other single factor, including chronological age, intelligence, reading ability or previous learning ability.

It is a child's developmental age that determines readiness for school. A ready child is able to deal with the school environment emotionally, socially, intellectually, and physically without undue stress.

Language Arts:
The academic year in Transitional Kindergarten begins with a strong emphasis on letter/sound correlation- a technique also known as phonics. Each letter of the alphabet is introduced using a multi-sensory approach. As the year progresses, students are encouraged to use phonetic tools to decode words to read and write their own thoughts. The children keep journals and write class books and language experience stories.

Mathematics:
The Transitional Kindergarten program uses a wide variety of manipulatives to help bridge the understanding between concrete and abstract aspects of mathematics. Student's experiment with several different methods to solve the same problem. Mathematical computations are incorporated in such everyday activities as taking attendance, reading the thermometer and counting how many days school has been in session.

Social Studies:
The students will recognize their own unique and diverse characteristics and discover what they have in common with others. They will begin to understand how the many people in their school or neighborhood community affect their lives.

Science:
The students will observe and explore the local features of the earth, water, and sky by describing, collecting, organizing, interpreting and communicating, information as it relates to the weather and seasons. They will begin to observe and explore the characteristics of living things by collecting evidence of similarities and differences that exist among living things.

Physical Education:
Physical Education in the Transitional Kindergarten class emphasizes learning to cooperate and be a team member, while improving skills in favorite activities: running, hopping, skipping, throwing, kicking, and catching.

Music:
In Music, the students develop a basic understanding of rhythm through beginning dance, movement, and singing, and by playing rhythm instruments. Finger plays and drama are included.