Welcome to Kindergarten! St. Mary's Kindergarten Program is committed to a philosophy which centers on the development of the "whole child". Our goal is to provide a safe and nuturing Christian environment that promotes physical, social-emotional, cognitive, linguistic and spiritual growth for every child. At the same time, we also attempt to be sensitive to the needs and preferences of our families and the larger St. Mary community.

Our curriculum takes into consideration those goals and outcomes set forth by the state of Illinois and the Archdiocese of Chicago. Developmentally appropriate practices are utilized when planning lessons. Units, themes and centers will most often foster development in all domains. A variety of techniques and strategies are used to accommodate the learning styles of our students taking into consideration their cultural backgrounds, developmental levels, their level of maturity and prior life experiences. Unlike teaching isolated skills, themes enable students to build on prior knowledge and make the learning of new concepts both challenging and enjoyable.

Spiritual growth and healthy social-emotional development are fostered within a nurturing and caring Christian classroom environment. Constant consideration is given to our student’s individual needs. Christian values and teachings are modeled and integrated throughout each school day. Through role playing, guided instruction and literature, students learn the important social skills necessary to their future success both as Christians and citizens of the larger community. A high level of respect is fostered for each student’s individuality within the classroom. St. Mary’s kindergarten students develop a positive self image as they experience the joy of learning.

Language Arts

We are continuously developing our phonemic awareness skills. Some of the ways we do this are through our Calendar activities, use of the Word Wall, creating sentences in our journals using sight words and inventive spelling and Letter of the Week. We also like listening to stories and sometimes making our own books to take home and read to our families.

Math

We are constantly learning new things in Math. We begin our year with lots of graphing. We graph our birthdays, the number of boys and girls in our class and how we travel to school during our first weeks together. We always find something to graph as the year goes on. The students learn number identification, sequencing, counting skills, number formation, skip counting, ordinal numbers, basic addition and subtraction and the list goes on.

Social Studies and Science

Throughout the year we touch on topics as they occur in our calendar, such as most holidays, and occasions like Johnny Appleseed’s birthday, Martin Luther King Day, Groundhog Day provide us with unique learning opportunities. In Science, we learn about apples and pumpkins and bats and butterflies to name a few. We also do a unit on potatoes when we are learning about St. Patrick. We also use Scholastic Weekly Readers to supplement many topics.!

Religion

Because we are a Catholic school, there is a strong emphasis on Christian values, which we try to practice every day. In our Religion classes, we learn about such topics as Creation, our five senses (which also carries over into science), God’s many gifts (part of Creation), Friends and Family and important parts of the Church year, such as Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. We also learn about the Mass, which we attend with our 5th grade church partners every Thursday. In addition, we begin to learn basic Catholic prayers.

We love Kindergarten!!!

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Any Concerns please e-mail me at <carmodyn@stmaryschool.net>Homeroom Teacher Room 5