A Day in VPK
VPK instruction starts at 9:00 a.m. Families who need a longer day can arrive from 7:00 a.m., and we’re open until 6:00 p.m.
- Arrival / Breakfast / Free Play
- Clean-up / Bathroom Routine
- VPK Starts
- Circle Time (morning board, calendar, weather, etc.)
- Story Time
- Transition
- Table Learning Activity / Large Group
- Transition
- Learning Centers / Small Group
- Transition / Bathroom
- Playground
- Handwashing / Prepare for Lunch
- Lunch & Care Routines
- Rest Time
- Wake Up & Care Routines
- Snack
- Transition / Bathroom
- Story Time / Review Day
- Learning Centers
- Playground
- Music / Movement
- Table Toys / Art / Library
Our VPK Curriculum
Our curriculum covers all eight areas of early learning, so children grow as learners, friends and confident kindergarteners.
Physical Development
- Health & wellbeing
- Active physical play · safety awareness · personal care routines · healthy habits and nutrition
- Motor development
- Gross motor · gross motor perception (sensorimotor) · fine motor
Approaches to Learning
- Eagerness & curiosity
- Investigate and experiment
- Persistence
- Attends to tasks
- Creativity & inventiveness
- Responding to open-ended questions
- Planning & reflection
- Brainstorming ideas
Social & Emotional Development
- Emotional functioning
- Express and identify emotions · demonstrate appropriate affect
- Managing emotions
- Self-regulation
- Relationships with adults & peers
- Develop positive relationships · social problem solving
- Identity & belonging
- Develops self-awareness and independence
Language & Literacy
- Listening & understanding
- Knowledge and understanding through listening
- Speaking & vocabulary
- Clarity of speech · receptive and expressive language
- Sentences & conversation
- Age-appropriate grammar and syntax · verbal and nonverbal communication
- Emergent reading & writing
- Phonological awareness · alphabetic print knowledge · written expression
Mathematical Thinking
- Number sense
- Count and identify 1–31 · quantify · one-to-one correspondence
- Number & operations
- Compose and decompose number sets
- Patterns & geometry
- Identify, extend and duplicate AB patterns · 2-D and 3-D shapes · sort, classify and create shapes
- Spatial relations, measurement & data
- Beside, next to, between, below, over and under · measure objects · sequence · represent, analyze and predict
Scientific Inquiry
- Exploration & discovery
- Explore the social and physical environment · use of scientific tools
- Life, physical, earth & space science
- Living things and their environments · movement and speed · states of matter · properties of earth and sky
- Environment
- Natural resources · conservation · environmental protection
- Engineering & technology
- Using simple tools and machines to solve problems
Social Studies
- Culture & identity
- Cultural attributes of self and others · characteristics of self
- Individuals & groups
- Similarities of self and others · role of groups · leadership
- Spaces, places & environments
- Personal space · maps, globes, GPS · human impact on the environment
- Time, civics & economics
- Sequence of events · principles of democracy · wants vs. needs · technology and our world
Creative Expression
- Sensory art
- Open-ended, process-oriented materials
- Music & creative movement
- Individual and group activities · representing imagination, feelings and experiences
- Imaginative & creative play
- Dramatic play
- Appreciation of the arts
- Cultural perspectives
Florida Standards We Follow
Our VPK follows the Florida Early Learning and Developmental Standards for four-year-olds. These are the language, literacy and math benchmarks children work toward before kindergarten. Tap a section to see them.
Language & Literacy: Listening and Understanding
- Engages in multiple back-and-forth communicative interactions with adults and peers to set goals, follow rules, solve problems and share what is learned.
- Shows understanding by asking and answering factual, predictive and inferential questions, adding relevant comments and reacting appropriately.
- Identifies the main idea and some details of a conversation, story or informational text, and connects what is learned to existing knowledge.
- Demonstrates increased ability to focus and sustain attention, set goals and solve dilemmas presented in conversation, story, text or play.
- Achieves mastery of two-step directions and usually follows three-step directions.
Language & Literacy: Speaking, Vocabulary and Sentences
- Speaks and is understood by both familiar and unfamiliar adults, though may make some pronunciation errors.
- Understands age-appropriate vocabulary across many topics, functional and organizational language (same and different, in front of and behind, next to, opposite, below), and many thousands of words including subject-area words.
- Uses a large speaking vocabulary, adding new words weekly (typically more than 1,500 words), uses word-meaning relationships, and asks about unfamiliar words.
- Typically uses complete sentences of five or more words, regular and irregular plurals, past tense, pronouns and subject-verb agreement.
- Combines more than one idea using complex sentences (sequences and cause/effect) and sentences that stay on topic and communicate clearly.
Language & Literacy: Conversation
- Engages in conversations with two to three back-and-forth turns using language, gestures and expressions, including “please” and “thank you.”
- Asks and responds to more complex statements and questions, follows another’s conversational lead and appropriately starts or ends conversations.
- Demonstrates verbal and nonverbal conversational rules: takes turns, does not interrupt, and matches volume and language to the setting.
Language & Literacy: Emergent Reading and Writing
- Shows motivation for reading: selects books for enjoyment, connects stories to real life, asks to be read to and talks about printed materials.
- Phonological awareness: distinguishes words in sentences; combines and deletes words in compound words (“foot” + “ball” = “football”); combines and deletes syllables; combines onset and rime (“/c/” + “at” = “cat”).
- Alphabet and print knowledge: knows print conveys meaning, recognizes almost all letters when named, names most letters, and recognizes some letter sounds.
- Comprehension: retells or reenacts stories with increasing accuracy, and asks and answers questions about the story.
- Emergent writing: uses scribbles or writing to convey meaning, uses letter-like shapes or letters to write words, and writes own name.
Mathematical Thinking: Number Sense and Operations
- Subitizes (recognizes without counting) up to five objects.
- Counts and identifies the number sequence 1 to 31.
- Demonstrates one-to-one correspondence when counting objects in a row (one to 15 and beyond), and knows the last number spoken tells “how many” up to 10.
- Constructs and counts sets of objects (one to 10 and beyond) and finds which is more, less than or equal to 10.
- Reads and writes some numerals one to 10.
- Explores quantities up to eight to solve real-world joining and separating problems, and composes and decomposes sets up to eight.
Mathematical Thinking: Patterns, Geometry, Space and Measurement
- Identifies, extends and duplicates a simple AB pattern, and extends more complex patterns (ABB or ABC).
- Recognizes and names circle, square, triangle and rectangle; describes, sorts and classifies 2-D and 3-D shapes; creates shapes from other shapes; builds with 3-D shapes through play.
- Describes relationships between objects and locations (beside, next to, between, below, over and under) and uses directions to move through space.
- Measures object attributes with standard and nonstandard tools, compares length and weight, and seriates up to six objects by height or length.
- Represents, analyzes and discusses data (charts, graphs and tallies) and begins to predict the results of data collection.
Downloads
Questions about VPK? Call 954-987-1600 or email info@yka1.com.