Early Childhood (ECC) PK2-JK
St. Agnes -St. Dominic is a place where the sense of community is strong. When we walked through the doors of the Early Childhood Center to tour, it immediately felt like home for our family.
Our Littlest Stars and Suns
Children are busy, active and energetic! They are naturally curious about their surrounding environment and ready to absorb new vocabulary words, develop motor skills, and begin to understand the concept of cooperative play. With a focus on the social and emotional aspects of their development, St. Agnes Academy and St. Dominic School want to provide our Littlest Stars and Suns with a positive initial learning experience, laying the foundation for future academic success.
We Believe
- Children learn best in an environment based on respect that fosters self-esteem and builds confidence.
- Children learn best when encouraged to learn and grow within a foundation of developmentally appropriate experiences.
- Children learn best when the needs of the whole child are met.
- Children learn best through play, which encourages curiosity, discovery and problem solving.
- Children learn best when activities are designed to allow them to make choices and to solve problems.
- Children learn best when we create a partnership with their family.
Our Early Childhood Center is committed to providing a nurturing, faith-based education for young children and their families. Classes are co-educational in grades PK2, PK and JK. Our child-centered program focuses on the integration of physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and verbal development of the whole child. Our engaging program develops each child’s unique potential and inspires life-long learning. Laying the foundation for our Catholic and Dominican traditions, the early childhood experience fosters prayer, study, community and service.
Our Early Childhood facility allows children to be active and engaged learners. We have the materials and tools to explore, think creatively, solve problems, and make connections to the real world. We have the latest technology to enhance and expand the curriculum taught at each grade level. Teachers collaborate, share ideas and communicate on a daily basis about the active learning in our classrooms. We are able to implement our philosophy and develop activities that are conducive to learning through play by doing, by watching and imitating, and by making mistakes. We know that those are the ways young children learn best!
Goals For Our Early Childhood Classrooms
- Each child will be respected as an individual, learn to respect others, and learn to embrace differences and diversity.
- Each child will be an important contributor to the learning process.
- Activities will build new knowledge by making connections to previously learned concepts through exploration and creative thinking.
- Children will feel a sense of community in the classroom.
- Children will feel safe to make mistakes and to learn from them.
- Children will develop global awareness through their learning of other languages and cultures, as well as through experiences with 21st Century technologies.
ECC Curriculum
Two year olds learn from exposure to new experiences and through social interaction with peers and their teachers. At St. Agnes Academy and St. Dominic School, we strive to provide a safe, nurturing classroom that offers a multidisciplinary approach to learning. The language-rich environment, along with the ability for students to explore their surroundings, creates the perfect setting for social, emotional, and cognitive development. Our two-year-old classes attend Performing Arts, Spanish, Chapel, Physical Education and Library each week. Art and technology are woven into the day to enrich their experiences.
Our PK classes continue to focus on new experiences and a multidisciplinary approach to learning. We begin to focus on fine motor skills and begin our Handwriting without Tears curriculum. Manipulatives are used extensively throughout each day to help students master letter recognition, print concepts, numerology, and quantitative language.
Differentiated instruction becomes an important part of individualizing each student’s learning. Our PK classes attend Performing Arts, Spanish, Chapel, Physical Education and Library each week. They also explore the world via our Distance Learning Center where they get to visit zoos, museums and aquariums.
Our JK classes continue to focus on new experiences and a multidisciplinary approach to learning. We continue our Handwriting without Tears curriculum, and we add in McGraw Hill’s Language Arts curriculum. Small group work, as well as more independent work, becomes an essential part of each student’s day in order to prepare for Kindergarten.
Our JK classes attend Performing Arts, Spanish, Chapel, Physical Education and Library each week. They also explore the world via our Distance Learning Center where they get to visit zoos, museums and aquariums.
Julie Thompson Director of Early Childhood Education and Auxiliary Programs
Learn more about our Early Childhood Center by watching our video above!