Early Learning Experience
PreK 3, PreK 4, and Kindergarten
Our Early Learning Program
RPDS’s Early Learning Program is designed to meet the unique needs of our littlest learners. But don’t be fooled by their small stature. While they may be our tiniest, they are undoubtedly our mightiest learners! Their energy, curiosity, passion for exploration and experimentation, their willingness to take risks and persevere toward new discoveries and understandings, make them a force to be reckoned with!
Our PreK 3 and PreK 4 programs are intentionally designed to make learning joyful, playful and memorable. Faculty work collaboratively to design learning experiences that introduce students to the wider world in which they live through a curriculum that encompasses all subject areas, including the foundations of literacy, early numeracy, science, social studies, foreign language, STEAM, music and more. At the heart of RPDS’ mission is a commitment to cultivating the whole child, meaning our faculty not only provide our littlest learners with a rigorous and challenging academic program, they also curate learning opportunities that cultivate their students’ growing sense of personal responsibility, care and respect for others, cooperation and communication skills, emotional flexibility, resilience, and deep thinking and problem-solving skills. Whether gathered for a daily Care & Connect session, tinkering in our STEAM Lab, finding stillness in our Yoga Studio, or grooving in a Music & Movement class, our preschool students are reminded daily that they are leaders of their own learning and that learning is an adventure that should be relished!
The RPDS Early Learning Program immerses students in, laying the foundation for future success in the Lower School program and beyond. Those experiences are coupled with projects that connect our littlest citizens to the local Jacksonville community, providing them with authentic opportunities to consider the needs of others and to respond with joyous hearts as they begin to find their place in the context of the wider world.
PreK 3 at Riverside
Our PreK 3 program welcomes our youngest learners into the bright and wondrous world of school and the joy of lifelong learning. Our teachers are particularly sensitive to the social and emotional needs of preschoolers, providing them with the tender nurturance and positive encouragement they need to feel safe, valued, and capable of doing great things. Carefully designed to provide the necessary structure and predictability that young learners need, paired with dynamic learning opportunities that delight and engage the imagination, our PreK 3 program provides the perfect entry point for a robust and foundational RPDS education.
PreK 3 Curriculum
The PreK 3 curriculum lays a foundation for future literacy learning. Instruction is based on the Science of Reading and includes sound-symbol relationship activities using music, movement, art and hands-on learning encounters. Daily read aloud experiences use the highest quality trade books, and these shared book encounters introduce students to rich language, relatable characters and themes, diverse genres and favorite authors and series. Our handwriting program, Handwriting Without Tears, is introduced at this level, using a wide assortment of multisensory techniques as children learn that all letters are formed with some combination of large/small curves and large/small lines. Other aspects of literacy learning, including listening and speaking, are thoughtfully and intentionally cultivated throughout the day as students work collaboratively in learning stations and as they present and share ideas and experiences with classmates during each morning’s Care & Connect time.
Elements of Singapore Math are also introduced at the PreK 3 level as students begin to develop early numeracy concepts and their applicability in everyday life. Learning to recognize and form numbers, patterns, and comparisons are just some of the many concepts students master in PreK 3 through concrete, hands-on learning activities.
Students’ spiritual development is cultivated through daily Care & Connect gatherings and bi-monthly Rise and Shine events, in which students are reminded that they are each a beloved child of God, wonderfully made, delightfully unique, and called to care for self, others and the world around them with open, generous hearts. Bible stories that introduce our students to God’s love for mankind and His grace provide a foundation for lifelong moral and ethical development.
Our PreK 3 scientists are on a mission to explore and uncover the mysteries of the natural world around them! They enjoy STEAM class twice within the 6-day rotation, using those sessions to ask questions and to investigate answers through inquiry, experimentation, reflection and through opportunities to communicate new understandings to the wider community.
At the PreK 3 level, the goal of our social studies and global competencies program begins with understanding what a classroom community is and how each member contributes to that experience. Then it widens to encompass the school community. From there, in PreK 3, we widen their world just a bit more by opening up the classroom to include our elderly neighbors, who reside in a nearby assisted living facility. Opportunities for our youngest generation to mingle and develop relationships with the elderly pepper the PreK 3 experience, offering students regular opportunities to show care and compassion as they listen attentively to their life stories, as they make care packages, and as they enjoy periodic visits to their assisted living facility.
PreK 4 at Riverside
Our PreK 4 program is geared to meet the unique needs of wild and wonderful four year olds! As parents well know, four year olds want to be self-directing. Whether it is walking into the classroom on their own, unpacking, and deciding what activity to dive into first or finding solutions to their own problems by negotiating the finer points of what’s fair and not fair and through hands-on trial and error efforts. Four year-olds have energy to spare, stories to share, and an unquenchable thirst to know more and do more! Our faculty know this developmental stage well and design learning encounters with these characteristics in mind. Our PreK 4 program offers students regular opportunities to exercise choice and voice and to step into leadership roles as they develop a strong foundation of self-efficacy and confidence. Numerous opportunities abound for the children to hone their social emotional skills as this is valued equally with academic development at this important stage of childhood.
PreK 4 Curriculum
Early literacy skills grow in leaps and bounds during the PreK 4 year. Immersed in daily opportunities to enjoy captivating stories and informational texts via trade books and big books, students are not only exposed to rich vocabulary, diverse genres and relatable characters and themes, they are also introduced to critical concepts of print, including the role of the author and illustrator, story structure, features of print, and more. Phonological and phonemic awareness are cultivated through rhyming and word play activities in addition to the daily Heggerty lessons which lay the early foundation for literacy growth. Early phonics understanding is developed through activities that solidify sound-symbol relationships based on the Science of Reading principles and Orton-Gillingham methods. Immersed in a print-rich environment, our PreK 4 students quickly begin communicating ideas, experiences, opinions and authorship via writing. Whether drawing pictures on a post-it in the Housekeeping Center, labeling items in a science station or stretching out sounds to compose a note to a classmate or teacher, our PreK 4 students put pencil to paper fearlessly and passionately. Fine motor development is further strengthened through hands-on learning tasks that develop coordination and strength and through the continued use of our Handwriting Without Tears foundation begun in PreK 3.
RPDS students are immersed in the Singapore Math approach. At the PreK 4 level, our faculty design concrete learning activities that solidify early numeracy concepts using manipulative items and nonstandard measurement tools. Some of the mastery goals at this level include recognizing and forming numbers to ten, counting to ten with 1:1 correspondence, patterning, sorting and classifying. In PreK 4, students’ science minds are stretched through the inclusion of technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics via our STEAM program. Our four-year olds go to the STEAM Lab twice within the six-day rotation to delve deeply into units of inquiry that integrate math and science with the themes they are exploring in their language arts lessons. Whether they are building a life-sized paper mache replica of a dinosaur jaw that illustrates the importance differences in the shape of an omnivore’s teeth versus an herbivore’s teeth or coding robots to follow a path through a rainforest, our STEAM classes offer our PreK 4 scientists with opportunities to engage in self-directed research, planning, decision-making, collaboration, prototyping, experimenting, reflection, and opportunities to share what they’ve learned with a wider audience.
In PreK 4, students’ science minds are stretched through the inclusion of technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics via our STEAM program. Our four-year olds go to the STEAM Lab twice within the six-day rotation to delve deeply into units of inquiry that integrate math and science with the themes they are exploring in the classroom. Our STEAM classes offer our PreK 4 scientists with opportunities to engage in self-directed research, planning, decision-making, collaboration, and reflection.
At the PreK 4 level, the overriding theme of our social studies program is community building uitilizing the literature Our Class is a Family and Our School is a Family as springboards for classroom discussions and activities. We then widen their perspective by acquainting them with a neighboring Assisted Living facility to help with the elderly.
Students’ spiritual development is cultivated through daily Care & Connect gatherings and bi-monthly Rise and Shine events, in which students are reminded that they are each a beloved child of God, wonderfully made, delightfully unique, and called to care for self, others and the world around them with open, generous hearts. Bible stories introduce our students to God’s love for mankind and demonstrate His grace which provides a foundation for lifelong moral and ethical development.
Kindergarten at Riverside
Step into a Kindergarten classroom at Riverside and you’ll quickly find yourself immersed in a bustling world populated by industrious readers, writers, engineers, scientists, musicians and more, all busily attending to the sacred business of childhood: bringing their vivid imaginations to life through their daily interactions and creations. At this age and stage, children continue to learn best through play, so the program is designed to provide them ample time to engage in open-ended imaginative play, where they can hone their social and emotional skills. Across the curriculum, this group’s lessons are designed to be fun, engaging, playful and highly physical. Thinking and communication skills grow rapidly at this age, so there is a strong emphasis on developing their capacity for reasoning, problem-solving, perspective-taking, self-expression, and personal responsibility. For that reason, this is the year our Kindergartners begin staying for the full academic day and formally begin the curriculum that will sustain them throughout their Lower Division years. Likewise, this is the year that they begin to take on more significant leadership roles within the classroom and beyond, serving as gracious docents when visitors stop by their classrooms and leading our bi-monthly Rise & Shine celebrations in which students are reminded that they are each a beloved child of God, wonderfully made, delightfully unique, and called to care for self, others and the world around them with open, generous hearts. Bible stories that introduce our students to God’s love for mankind and His grace provide a foundation for lifelong moral and ethical development.
Kindergarten Curriculum
Language and literacy development are central to the Kindergarten experience at RPDS. Listening and speaking skills are nurtured through class discussions, partner work, and shared reading experiences. The students engage in storytelling, journal writing, and dictation, all of which help them develop early writing abilities and a love of books and language. Grounded in the Science of Reading, our instruction emphasizes phonological and phonemic awareness through daily Heggerty lessons and systematic phonics principles utilizing the UFLi Foundations curriculum. Decodable readers with controlled text reinforce sound-spelling relationships and high-frequency words helping students develop their essential independent reading skills and confidence. Shared read-alouds expand the students’ overall comprehension skills as they are exposed to rich vocabulary, characterization, plot development, and theme. Recognizing the varied developmental levels of a Kindergarten student, our lead teacher and assistant teacher model allows for differentiated instruction tailored to each child’s. In addition, building on the fine motor development emphasized in PreK3 and PreK4, Kindergarten students begin formal handwriting practice through Handwriting Without Tears.
The Singapore Math Dimensions curriculum follows a spiraling, developmentally appropriate approach that guides Kindergarten students from concrete mathematical encounters to pictorial representations and early abstract thinking. Young mathematicians build number sense through engaging, hands-on concrete manipulative activities. Key skills explored in a Kindergarten math class include numbers to 100, comparing numbers, skip counting, basic addition and subtraction, understanding number bonds to 10, and recognizing coin values.
Science is taught through inquiry and hands-on exploration. Kindergarten students visit both the Science Lab and STEAM classroom twice during each six- day rotation. These experiences allow them to collaborate, prototype, experiment, and reflect, as well as to share their discoveries with others. Activities are thoughtfully connected to the themes and topics students are exploring in their homeroom classrooms.
Science is taught through inquiry and hands-on exploration. Kindergarten students visit both the Science Lab and the STEAM classroom twice during each six-day rotation. These experiences provide opportunities to collaborate, prototype, experiment, and reflect, as well as to share their discoveries with others. Activities are thoughtfully connected to the themes and topics students are exploring in their homeroom classrooms.
At the K level, the goal of our social studies and global competencies program is to help students develop an understanding of their place within a caring school community and what it means to be a contributing member of a class and school community. They also begin to perceive and appreciate the diverse experiences and perspectives of others across the global community.