Early Learning Experience
PreK 3 & PreK 4
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 is designed to serve as that magical door that swings wide, welcoming our littlest 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 RPDS education.
PreK 3 Curriculum
The PK 3 curriculum lays a foundation for future literacy learning by incorporating elements of Fountas and Pinnell’s Classroom Curriculum, including daily read aloud experiences using the highest quality trade books. These shared book encounters introduce students to rich language, relatable characters and themes, diverse genres and favorite authors and series. Sound-symbol relationships are introduced using music, movement, art, and hands-on learning encounters and our handwriting program, Handwriting Without Tears, is introduced at this level, using a wide assortment of multisensory techniques. Other aspects of literacy learning, including listening and speaking are thoughtfully and intentionally cultivated throughout the day as students work collaboratively in learning stations, take on leadership responsibilities within the classroom setting and as they present and share ideas and experiences with classmates.
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 science 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.
The goal of our social studies and global competencies program is to help students develop an understanding of their place within a caring community and to begin to perceive and appreciate the diverse experiences and perspectives of others across the global community. At the PreK 3 level, this 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 greatest generation pepper the PreK 3 experience, offering students regular opportunities to exercise their “care and compassion muscles” as they listen attentively to their life stories, as they make care packages, and as they enjoy periodic visits to their 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 that stretch their “courage muscles” and develop a strong foundation of self-efficacy and confidence.
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 through our Fountas and Pinnell Classroom Curriculum, 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 and early phonics understandings are developed through activities that solidify sound-symbol relationships. 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 use of our Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. Frequent opportunities to think deeply, via our Project Zero initiative, to listen actively, and to speak with clarity, flesh out our literacy learning goals in the PK 4 program.
From PreK 4 through sixth grade, RPDS students are immersed in the Singapore Math approach, a spiraling program that leads students on a developmentally appropriate path from concrete mathematical encounters in the younger grades to pictorial representations of mathematical concepts and finally to abstract mathematical work in the upper grades. At the PreK 4 level, our faculty design 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.
The goal of our social studies and global competencies program is to help students develop an understanding of their place within a caring community and to begin to perceive and appreciate the diverse experiences and perspectives of others across the global community. At the PreK 4 level, students are learning what it means to be a caring and contributing member of a class and a school community. We then widen their perspective by acquainting them with a local organization that supports families in need. Our students learn that not all families have access to the resources they enjoy on a daily basis-resources like nourishing food, warm, well-fitting clothing, a safe home, and new toys. Our PreK 4 students take on this challenge with their signature zest and joy, writing friendly letters, collecting items to donate, and showering their “neighbors” with boundless love and care. Sharpening their Perspective-taking abilities and strengthening their “compassion muscles” are just some of the social and emotional skills cultivated through our PreK4 social studies and global competencies program.
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.