Yellow Duck Preparatory School
732 446-4700
Yellow Duck graduates are known for their amazing reading and comprehension levels. Teaching emergent and effective readers is one of our top priorities, as it is the foundation for all other areas of learning. Using a multitude of teaching practices, our students become avid readers. The teacher reads aloud, with the students following along, while other times the students read aloud, as well as independently. They make inferences, brainstorm with classmates, summarize, ask questions, role play, learn vocabulary, and engage in comprehension. They become writers and story tellers, understanding the relationship between letters and sounds. Their expressive and receptive language soar!
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Kindergartners process information best by doing. Our students explore, touch, feel and manipulate objects. Having direct involvement stores the learned information in their “physical” memory. For example, Students study a unit on environmental science. They are given a clear stemmed flute, a tray of potting soil, water and a plant. Beginning with planting, to packing their plant into the flute and being able to see all the roots, they learned about the water cycle: condensation, precipitation, and evaporation. Visually making the connection, students exam all the parts of their plant; from the root system below to the shoot system above. Our young scientists will always remember how plants absorb nutrients and how and where photosynthesis occurs because they were actively engaged in the activity. They watched their plant “drink” and felt the sun on the leaves. They learned how green plants produce oxygen and “eat” the carbon dioxide and were mesmerized by the important role trees and plants play in their world. The children loved taking home their plant to watch it grow big and strong just like them through the year!
Full Day Kindergarten
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STEAM activities are a big part of the Kindergarten curriculum. Students examine apple cells under microscopes, make popcorn kernels dance in a jar, make lava erupt from a pumpkin volcano, and create a chemical reaction car that zooms across the floor. Every week the students love making discoveries in their Science Lab.
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Yellow Duck students become fluent readers. In Kindergarten we continue to build on the important letter-sound correspondence concept. The students start recognizing that pairs of letters have distinct and predictable sounds. An early understanding of the letter-sound correspondence enables students to become fluent readers in Kindergarten.
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Our Kindergartners learn to be creative thinkers and writers, understanding that each story has a beginning, middle and end. Students are taught how to write their own story with characters, a plot, and illustrations. Each student writes and draws in a journal throughout the year compiling a story called, “All About My Year in Kindergarten!” The teacher gives prompts such as, “What did you do over the weekend?” or “Tell me what you like to do with your best friend?” Creative writing at a young age has many lifelong benefits. It helps a child communicate, understand their emotions and problem solve. Their sentence structure, vocabulary, and use of punctuation become more advanced. Lastly, it helps their ability to focus and organize their ideas.
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Children learn more and remember more if concepts are taught using rhymes and repetition to help store in their memory, which are the building blocks to the next level of learning. They also remember more if they can relate it back to themselves. For example, when planting a flower in a plastic flute the teacher talks about condensation on the flute when they add cold water to the sun-warmed soil. Then they relate it back to examples in their own lives. Where else do they see condensation? ...On the mirror in their bathroom when they take a bath, or on their windows in their house on a cold winter day, when the sun is shining brightly.
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Yellow Duck students gain self-confidence because of all the opportunities they are given to speak in front of others and ask questions in a safe comforting environment. They receive the greatest encouragement --- Praise. One of those opportunities is, The Great Kapok Tree Show, in which they perform in front of their classmates and their parents. The Great Kapok Tree, by Lynne Cherry, is a popular read book for ages 6-8. It has been a tradition for many years for our Kindergarten classes to read and act out this book for Earth Day. This book is incorporated into one of the Science and Social Studies units. The children love to perform “on stage”. Through teacher guided instruction, the students discuss the setting, make predictions, problem solve and discuss the cause and effect in relation to the man cutting down a tree in the rainforest. The children use many critical thinking skills and understand the impact people’s actions have on the environment around the world.
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Teacher guided centers combined with independent centers encourages initiative, independence and self-confidence for young learners.
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Our Kindergarten classroom provides children opportunities to express ideas, ask questions to applaud their curiosity, encourage individuality and originality in their work, and to brainstorm with their classmates, as well as problem-solving as a group. Real life events are incorporated, such as elections. The children wait in line to go into a voting booth and cast their votes on a paper ballot, placing it into a ballot box. They vote on topics such as their favorite sight word. Books are read with their teacher, including, Max for President, creating their own posters and speeches. In the book, Amelia Bedilia's First Vote, they learn about absentee ballots, run-offs and the power of persuasion. Students see how elections provide a way for everyone to have a say, through other books, such as Duck for President and One Vote, Two Vote, I Vote, You Vote by Dr Seuss. Students learn to present, while giving a speech at the podium to practice public speaking in a nurturing, encouraging atmosphere. This produces tremendous self-confidence and emotional growth for children.
Yellow Duck graduates have a springboard that sends them soaring into 1st grade with the attitude of, “I’m Ready!” Students graduate with a love for learning that lasts a lifetime and a foundation of academics to match! An exciting, academically rich kindergarten program is the best investment you can make in your child’s education at a young age.