5 Year Olds | Childrens Center of Lake Forest

5 Year Old Care

5 years / Pre-k

Our 5 year olds follow a much more structured curriculum and schedule to fully develop their growth and development emotionally, physically, socially, morally and intellectually. The children are given opportunities to experience and explore through learning activities at their own pace, by themselves, with a friend or in a small group.

Developing literacy and numeracy is an intricate part of our 5 year old’s education, which is why we strongly seek to foster this development with reading stories, vocabulary building, songs, fingerplays, math and writing skills and oral language skills. We respect each child’s pace of learning growth, development and contribute positively with praise, encouragement, and incentives.

We believe communication with parents is an important part of early childhood development, so we provide daily reports to inform parents about their child’s progress and daily activities. We strive to engage children with an abundance of arts and craft activities, math equations and puzzles. We work on proper pencil grip and use of scissors to help refine fine motor skills. Self-help skills, good manners, and the practice of healthy hygiene habits is also strongly encouraged and reinforced.

5 Year Old Classroom Curriculum

Daily story time
Classroom roles (performing classroom job independently)
Rhymes, song and dance
Developing social skills
Making daily choices
Numbers and operations
Comparing and contrasting
Discovering patterns
Following directions
Observing and asking questions
Fine motor skills
(increase hand eye coordination)
Taking turns with peers
Showing empathy and care
Art through different mediums
Hour of unstructured free play
Learning measurements
Classifying and categorizing
Geometry and spatial sense
Build and creates (constructive play)
Explores physical properties of material (functional play)
Role play (socio dramatic play)

5 Year Old Classroom Curriculum

Welcome to the preschool years!

The preschool years are a very special time in the lives of young children as they gain independence, self-control, become keen observers, and express their ideas more effectively through complex phrases and sentences.

In the Three’s, Four’s and Five’s children are engaged in purposeful play, here at CCLF we believe that when children participate in meaningful play they learn about themselves, other people and the world around them. When children play, they acquire and develop language, problem solving skills, learn to control behavior, their feelings and explore social roles. Our teachers encourage the development of social play through different interest areas that each concentrate on a different developmental skill and interactive play. Through our Creative Curriculum Studies teachers work together with children to develop questions, investigate to find answers, ask follow up questions and reflect on what they have learned. Our teacher facilitate this learning by observing children’s interest and building on them, to determine the most appropriate level of support and to encourage deeper learning of each individual child all in a caring and loving environment.