Transitional Kindergarten

 Religion
We are truly blessed at St. John of God School, that our little ones have the opportunity
to celebrate mass and prayer services with our parish and school community. The
students are able to grow in their Catholic faith by listening to bible stories as well as
learning about the Holy Family and saints.  Most of all they learn that Jesus is their best friend
and that they should strive to walk in His footsteps by being kind, respectful and loving
to not only people but to all of God’s creation. Throughout the year they are given
opportunities to participate in Christian Service Projects.
Art/Music and Movement
Children learn through art, music, movement and play. TK and Kindergarten are
encouraged to explore, create, think, ask questions and to use their imagination.
Students create various art projects using different materials to spark their creativity. Students sing and move to learning songs. This is an excellent way to help the students learn their alphabet and letter sounds, numbers, counting, following directions and great “Brain Breaks”.
Reading (ELA)
Letter -sound correspondence, phonemic awareness, sight word recognition, rhyming,
word families and story elements are the key areas TK and Kindergarten focus on
throughout the year. Students learn how to identify letters in the alphabet and their
sounds, and about letters and sounds that go together to form words. Kindergarten
students are expected to read words by the end of the school year.
TK and Kindergarten students work throughout the year developing fine motor skills.
This includes holding a crayon or pencil correctly for coloring and printing. Cutting with
scissors, building with legos and other types of building manipulatives.
Students will also be taught how to write sentences correctly and will be encouraged to
write stories, poems and to illustrate their writing samples.
Math
The focus in Math in TK and Kindergarten is all about the basics. Students will learn
how to count to 100 by ones, fives and tens. They will also learn how to count to 20 by
twos. They will learn how to identify numbers 1 through 20 and print them correctly.
Other key concepts focused on will be more and less, ordinal numbers, basic addition
and subtraction, patterns, sorting and graphing. Shapes and colors will be explored as
well as time and money. By the end of TK and Kindergarten, students should know the
components of a calendar - days, weeks, months of the year.
Science
The focus in Science in TK and Kindergarten is starting to make sense of the world
around them. Students will learn about plants, animals, good health habits, the weather,
and about their five senses and basics about their bodies. In class we will conduct
simple experiments to spark curiosity and problem solving. A wonderful media
enhancement to the lesson is Mystery Science. The students enjoy watching each
episode that gets them excited for Science.
Social Studies
The focus in Social Studies in TK and Kindergarten is learning about families, the world
around them and being a good citizen. In class we learn about difficult cultures,
holidays, customs and traditions. We also learn about people who have impacted our
country by their acts of kindness and courage. Each day we begin class by reciting the
Pledge of Allegiance and talk about how we need to be respectful to all people.