Learning Through Play in Junior Kindergarten
Our Junior Kindergarten (JK) class is designed for children who are not quite ready for kindergarten or want the school experience to help with the transition into a longer school day while working on social and emotional interactions with their peers in a play-based school setting.
Children in JK can extend familiar activities, play increasingly challenging games, and create and sustain complex fantasy play scenarios. They incorporate literacy into every aspect of the classroom, making signs, books and writing letters, creating and using sign-up lists, group time agendas and journals. Children also gain math skills and explore numeracy through the use of board games, tallying votes, keeping scores, measuring, and other activities intrinsic to the classroom.
All our JK students are 4 years old and older and most have been in group settings, so their focus is less on separation and more on social connections. Communication and negotiation skills necessary to successfully navigate friendships and work in larger groups are supported and modeled by teachers, while acknowledging each child’s increasing sense of individual identity.
Children’s ideas and suggestions inform group-time content and classroom activities, and children feel a strong sense of classroom ownership as they contribute to group decision-making. They may vote or take surveys, create classroom calendars and daily snack menus, take turns as leader, and sustain attention during a daily focused table time.
Still very much a nursery school program, our JK classes offer meaningful, age appropriate experiences that prepare children for meeting the challenges of Kindergarten the following years. Our JK classes offer a slightly longer day and more complex challenges for our oldest children.
The JK class meets 4 afternoons a week for 3 hours a day and has a 6:1 child/adult ratio.