Aberdeen Hall Kelowna Okanagan Private Preparatory School

Our Curriculum

The Preschool Programme

Overview

Aberdeen Hall’s Preschool is an enhanced, modern Montessori based, instructional programme taught by certified Early Childhood Educators.  Our student:teacher ratio is an excellent 10:1 or better, and is supported by a separate full-time daycare. Our dedicated teachers work diligently with our students to achieve excellent academic results, create a solid foundation of basic skills, foster a love of learning and develop self-esteem.  We have a Junior Preschool Programme that accepts students 30 months or older and a Senior Preschool Programme, for 4-year olds. The Senior programme prepares the students for our enriched full-day Kindergarten.

Our sessions run for 3 hours each day, morning or afternoon, 4 days or 5 days a week. We operate from the beginning of September to the third week in June.  The programme is a dynamic, academic programme and is designed to develop strong primary literacy and numeracy skills.  Our teachers have great reputations and enrich the daily programme with special field trips and guest presentations.  The Montessori material and programme is designed to allow each child to progress at his/her own rate and for unlimited growth and development. 

Practical Life Components

In the Practical Life area the students choose from a variety of purposeful activities such as, sifting, pouring and using a variety of common tools to increase concentration and motor skills.

An extremely important part of the Practical Life area is the art shelf, which contains a variety of tools and mediums for different projects. Our programme combines teacher lead instruction with unstructured, child lead projects and activities. Occasionally, we complete group projects such as making scarecrows in October, and art projects for Valentine’s Day.

Sensorial

Our Montessori programme is a multi-sensory approach to education. The specially designed materials provide students with the opportunity to isolate qualities such as colour, size, shape, texture, smell and sound.  The use of materials such as blocks, triangles, cylinders and rods form a base for future number work. The sorting, grading, matching, patterning and building are also essential in the development of additional academic skills.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, the curriculum starts with the use of sensorial materials, and then progresses to symbol and quantity work. When students can sort size, they are given lessons on recognizing the number shapes and names of 0 to 10. Once they can count to 10, they start to put quantity to symbol and begin to order the numbers 0 to 20. The concept of addition to 10 and the teen numbers are the next step. All of these steps are taught with hands on materials, in a child friendly way.  This progresses to a variety of exercises with numbers to 100.

Science & Social Studies

The Science and Cultural part of the programme provides opportunities to experiment, discover, and experience the world we live in. Our activity shelves are always full, and have a wide variety of hands-on activities such as; magnet use, color mixing and water tables. We explore the names and shapes of the world’s continents and countries, living and non-living things in our environment, plants and animals, our country of Canada and the community we live in. Through fieldtrips, news items, teacher lead discussions and presentation we introduce the concept of being environmentally aware.

Language

In Language, students are introduced to the letter names and phonetic sounds of the alphabet in a hands-on sensorial way using sandpaper letters, small objects, dot printing and a variety of games. Once they have mastered most of the sounds they start to “build” three and four-letter phonetic words using the moveable alphabet. During this prelude to reading, we teach the students how to put sounds together to form words before decoding simple written language.  A very large part of each day’s programme includes language-enhancing activities. Students are encouraged to tell about happenings, to show and share at group time, to participate in small drama plays and games, to learn poems and songs and to enjoy daily story time.

Positive Social Skills

The Preschool programme promotes a caring attitude towards others. We also participate in the ‘Virtues Project’ (created by Linda Popov), which helps students develop socially, morally and spiritually. We integrate the cultivation of virtues into our existing routines, virtues such as kindness, respect, joyfulness, helpfulness, cooperation, and responsibility.

• Preschool
• Kindergarten
• Junior School