Preschool ages 3-5
At Cornerstone we believe that every day should be filled with opportunities to experience God’s love and to explore the world He created for us. Do you believe that the teachings of the Bible can lead to a healthier, well-rounded child? These formative and impressionable years of your child’s life should be in the hands of caring educators who provide a strong foundation that will positively influence your child into adulthood. At Cornerstone, we focus on teaching children to be compassionate, giving, and caring towards others; to be gentle and patient; use self-control, and to feel the joy of God’s love.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
Our Early Learning Center provides an emotionally supportive and physically safe environment. We encourage strong partnerships between teachers and parents that provide the foundation necessary for children to blossom – growing both hearts and minds. As a Christ-centered program, we seek to develop the character of each child by modeling love, kindness, and empathy. We infuse faith into all aspects of a child’s day. From Bible stories told in class, to singing in Chapel, to praying for classmates, learning about God is woven into the fabric of the day-to-day classroom experience. When a child attends the ELC at Cornerstone, he will be surrounded by teachers who model Christian values.
Play is crucial for children as they develop their imagination, self-confidence, creativity, and problem-solving skills. We use a hands-on, multi-sensory approach to ensure that all children are appropriately challenged, enriched, and prepared to move on to the next level of learning. As teachers, we actively foster a love of learning and encourage our children to become independent, self-confident, and inquisitive learners, as well as being followers in the Christian faith.
In the preschool room, children are given many opportunities to explore, practice, and master skills, through large and small group activities, free play, and specials, such as music, library, and physical education classes. Preschoolers refine the skills they were exposed to as toddlers. They are introduced to the magic of sounds through the Heggerty Pre-Kindergarten Curriculum for Phonemic Awareness. This program allows children to play with sounds in words, and increases their level of phonemic awareness, the first step toward reading. Children learn math concepts while playing at the rice table (measurement), building with blocks (size, comparing), and by counting their goldfish at snack time (who has more, less, and how many). Science is taught through hands-on experiments and observing the world around us.
Our preschool program is set up to build confidence, self-awareness, and tolerance of others. As children are preparing for kindergarten, we teach more than ABC’s and 1,2,3’s. There are some very important social skills to be taught, like how to be part of a group, to take turns, to follow directions, problem solve, and to stand up for ourselves and others in an acceptable way. This is the true foundation of future learning. Our hope is that each child will leave our classroom having mastered these skills and prepared to focus on the more structured learning that takes place in the kindergarten classroom.
