Pre-Kindergarten
Welcome to Pre-Kindergarten at St. Mary's Academy. We offer a full-day, play-based program for 4-year-old children. At St. Mary’s Academy, we believe that the best way to help children succeed is to teach them to be creative confident thinkers. This means offering each child opportunities for hands-on exploration and discovery to help build life-long critical thinking skills and to foster confidence.
At St. Mary's Academy, we also value leadership, social justice and the ability to enact change in the world. Even our youngest learners on campus explore ways they can make a difference locally and globally. Our Loretto School Values of faith, community, justice and respect provide the framework for everything we do.
The daily curriculum (The Creative Curriculum) provides creative, dynamic activities that allow children to learn through experimentation and exploration while encouraging development of higher-order thinking skills. Our two-person teaching teams encourage and support every type of learner and address all the important areas of learning including project-based investigations, building children’s confidence, fostering creativity and critical thinking skills, and promoting positive outcomes/demonstrations of learning. Spanish, art, music, physical education, library, computer science and religion are also integral pieces in helping our students to develop as learners.
What more will you find in Pre-K at St. Mary's Academy?
- Small class sizes
- Project-based units of study that align with children's interests
- Support for children's learning through social emotional, physical, cognitive, and language development
- Public speaking opportunities
- Computer science integrated into the curriculum
- Outdoor play time every day
- Focus on kindness and empathy utilizing Second Step curriculum, provided by school counselor
- Field trips to great locations such as the local police station, a nearby gardening center, and a recycling plant
- After-school care
I love the balance between high expectations and play-based approach and the support around small motor development. The communication from teachers is excellent! - PK parent