The preschool years are a special period in the lives of young children.  During this time, they begin to trust persons outside their families.  They gain independence and self-control, and they learn to take the initiative and assert themselves in socially acceptable ways.  The become keen observers who experiment to find out what happens when they interact with other people and manipulate materials.  Their language skills surpass the limited vocabulary and sentence structure of toddlers.

Preschoolers use thousands of words and complex phrases and sentences to communicate.  As they learn to understand others and express their ideas more effectively, their horizons expand.  In addition, preschool children change physically, growing and gaining strength, agility, balance, and coordination. (Excerpts from: Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers, & Twos)

Our Pre-K Blue and Pre-K Gold classrooms, at Sunbeam, provide relevant experiences and support to children within the areas of Social/Emotional, Physical, Cognitive, and Language development. 

WV Pre-K Blue and WV Pre-K Gold (3-5 years of age)

Both of our WV Pre-K classrooms are mixed age groups.  A mixed age group……

• Fosters a natural and family-like setting: contributes to a sense of community.
• Provides an opportunity to build relationships with peers, teachers and families for an extended period of time.
• Meets developmental needs of individual children at all the various developmental levels.
• Affords the opportunity for children to experience being one of the youngest and oldest children in the classroom.
• Offers chances for older children to learn to become more nurturing with younger children.
• Allows children to interact at different social levels.
• Creates a more diverse peer group for children.
• Encourages teachers to remain working at the same center, because of deeper attachments to the children in their care.
• Facilitates peer modeling: older peers are able to model classroom routines and expectations for younger peers.
• Limits the likelihood parents will compare children, and enables parents to understand developmental differences among children.                          
• Encourages parents to develop sustained relationships with teachers and other parents. 

Sunbeam WV Pre-K is a Marion County Board of Education collaborative site. Our site enrolls children that are of WV Pre-K age that also need care before and after Pre-K hours. Our WV Pre-K teachers use Teaching Strategies for PreSchool, the approved curriculum by the West Virginia Department of WV, as their main guide for lesson planning.  Lesson plans are posted and emailed to parents weekly.  Teachers communicate with families via email and face to face conversations during drop off and pick up. Teachers enter information into Teaching Strategies and share the link in order to provide the families with documentation guided by the West Virginia Early Learning Standards.  With Teaching Strategies parents get a snapshot of daily experiences and developmental growth as they occur.