Curriculum Summary
Language Arts
Listening Skills
- Listens attentively to shared reading, literature, language activities, auditory media, etc.
- Identifies main ideas through auditory processing
- Restates information
Reading
- Recognizes basic sight word vocabulary
- Locates context clues
- Utilizes letter/sound associations to decode words
- Distinguishes reality and fantasy in stories
- Draws conclusions from literature
- Predicts outcomes
- Practices oral/silent reading for enjoyment and expression
- Reads a variety of written text: narrative, fantasy, fiction and informational text
- Comprehends through a variety of strategies: prior knowledge, prediction, retelling, story maps, skimming, and main ideas/details
- Reads for a variety of purposes
- Phonic Skills
- Recognizes consonant sounds/symbols
- Identifies long and short vowel sounds
- Recognizes consonant blends
- Identifies base words
- Identifies contractions
- Utilizes consonant clusters and consonant diagrams to decode words
- Identifies compound words
- Forms plurals by adding –s or –es to words
English
- Identifies telling, asking, commanding, and exclaiming sentences
- Recognizes partial and complete sentences
- Practices use of proper punctuation at the end of a sentence
- Recognizes an apostrophe & a comma
- Practices proper use of capital letters
Writing
- Develops writing skills through frequent journal writing
- Develops self-expression through writing creative stories
- Writes words, sentences, and stories as a response to literature
- Spelling
- Identifies and spells high frequency words
- Utilizes spelling as an integrated part of writing
- Applies phonetic rules where applicable
- Practices alphabetizing
- Handwriting Skills
- Develops fine motor skills
- Writes sentences from dictation using correct formation of manuscript letters
Mathematics
- Creates, copies, and extends patterns
- Counts and writes numbers to 20
- Interprets a variety of graphs
- Understands addition and subtraction facts
- Practices problem solving
- Practices addition by counting on
- Uses mental math skills
- Utilizes the commutative property of addition
- Demonstrates measurement concepts
- Identifies and counts money: pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters
- Understands place value
- Tells and writes time on the hour and half-hour
- Learns to subtract by counting back
- Learns to model and finish related subtraction facts and fact families
- Practices addition and subtraction facts to 18
- Practices counting to 100 by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s
- Demonstrates understanding of geometric principles: solids, congruent figures, symmetry, plane shapes and points inside, outside, and on a figure
Science
- Life Science
- Living and Non-Living Organisms
- Identifies a variety of plants and animals
- Identifies the needs of plants
- Observes different seeds
- Identifies the needs of animals
- Discovers the similarities among plants/animals
- Discovers ways animals help people
- Observes and compares animal coverings
- Identifies various animal homes
- Describes likeness/differences of adult animals and their young
- Classifies plant, animal, and people as living things
- Identifies the needs of living things
- Introduced to reproduction of living things
- Classifies plant and animals according to observable characteristics
- Compares living and non-living things
Earth Science
Space
- Compares the day and night sky
- Observes objects in the day and night sky
- Identifies the importance of the sum (light and heat)
- Identifies the changes in the shape of the moon on different days
- Identifies when stars can be seen and why
- Identifies the planet names and placement in the universe
- Identifies where the moon’s light comes from
- Identifies position of Earth in comparison to other planets
Geosphere
- Examines and compares different kinds of soil
- Discusses the components of soil
- Discovers what happens when soil and water are mixed
- Compares rocks in color, shape, texture, hardness, and size
- Groups rocks according to color, shape, texture, hardness, and size
- Observes how water flows and gathers
- Identifies the uses for water and air
- Describes the process of recycling and its importance
Ecology
- Observes the effects of pollution on air, land and water
- Discovers the importance of water to all aspects of life
- Discovers the importance of recycling, ex. Newspaper, cans, glass, etc.
- Becomes familiar with the rain cycle
- Identifies the effects of littering and waste
- Understands the importance of conservation of natural resources, ex. trees, etc.
Religion
- Recognizes that God knows our name and that each child knows God’s name
- Understands that life is a gift from God
- Discovers that God made us to become the best persons that we can be
- Understands that God cares about each child
- Comes to a fuller awareness that God is the creator of all that is
- Understands that we please God by receiving and using God’s gifts
- Discovers that people need to care for God’s creation
- Becomes aware that church is one place we can celebrate God’s gifts
- Shows love for God by thanking Him for everything
- Learns/practices prayer
- Introduced to the saints
- Listens to and discusses bible stories
- Participates in prayer services
- Attends school liturgies
Social Studies
- Learns how families are alike and different
- Learns responsibilities of work and play; family rules etc.
- Understands the characteristics of a family
- Learns ways that families change
- Learns that food, shelter, clothing and love are basic needs of families
- Identifies special holiday celebrations
- Recognizes that families celebrate together
- Interprets map symbols
- Learns map skills and uses directional words: left, right, far, near, north, south, east, and west
- Identifies the globe as a model of the world
- Identifies landforms and bodies of water
- Understands that the U.S.A. is made up of 50 states
- Recognizes that people live in different kinds of homes around the world
- Understands the difference between human wants and needs/choices people make
- Recognizes that people must work to meet their needs
- Learns how families around the world have similar needs and a variety of wants