Lower Elementary
Children in these critical early grades thrive in a nurturing, intellectually stimulating environment that allows them to safely extend their cognitive and emotional boundaries. Because of our small class sizes, our lower school teachers get to know each student on a personal level, tailoring the curriculum to benefit each child.
Lower elementary students widen their concept of the world in both traditional and nontraditional ways. Teachers incorporate unique projects, performances, electives, and field trips into the curriculum. Students practice researching and constructing knowledge on a wide range of topics, often combining subjects in interdisciplinary ways.
Students are exposed to Spanish at the preschool level, and begin reading and writing Spanish as early as first grade. Implementing the recommendations of the American Council of the Teaching of Foreign Languages, (ACTFL), we strive for communication in the Spanish classroom to comprise 90% of instructional time. All KCDS students take Spanish four times per week.
Our lower school is further enriched by music, visual art, and physical education.
In Kindergarten we build upon the foundation laid in Preschool. In Language Arts we work on simple sentence construction, using letter-sound association and invented spelling to make words.
In the individualized reading program, we use phonics-based readers which teaches sounding out as well as whole word recognition.
In math we work on simple addition and subtraction, comparing numbers, classifying and counting data, introduction to money, geometric shapes, patterning and telling time. Using manipulatives and problem-solving helps the students better understand the concepts of math and numbers.
In Social Studies we dive into many topics to help understand our world a little better. We learn about our city, state, country and continent as well as the seven continents and holidays celebrated around the world.
In Science, we explore many topics such as plants, animals, five senses and the human body, weather and force and motion.
Phonics
- Beginning Sounds
- Last Sounds
- Middle Sounds
- CVC Words & Word Families
- Consonant Blends
- Digraphs
- CVCe-Long Vowels
- Vowel Teams
Writing
- Labeling
- Writing Lists
- Personal Narrative
- Expository
- Opinion
- Nonfiction
- Persuasive
- Poetry
- Making Cards & Invitation
Math
- Counting & Cardinality
- Numbers & Operations in Base 10
- Operations & Algebraic Thinking
- Geometry
- Measurement & Data
Social Studies
- Citizenship
- Then & Now
- Holidays Around the World
- My Community
- Our World
Science
- Plant & Animal Secrets (Life Science)
- Weather Watching (Earth & Space Science)
- Force Olympics (Physical Science)
