Programs

Your little toddler is busy learning, approaching the world with curiosity and seeking a sense of belonging. Our toddler program encourages the children to build a community in an environment that supports learning together and caring for each other.

The toddlers eat meals at tables together and enjoy an open concept playroom with free play and weekly activities that promote exploration and learning. The children play daily in the outdoor playground or kiddie pool, or on days when the weather doesn’t cooperate, they’ll play in our resource-packed indoor home corner.

At Meadows Academy, a toddler’s day consists of:

• Self-selected play
• Reading books
• Circle time
• Focused learning
• Singing songs
• Sensory experiences
• Finger Plays
• Sand Play
• Art

The Pre-K program is designed to promote kindergarten readiness through an inquiry-based STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art, and Math) program.

The Pre-K program instills excitement and confidence in your child as they conduct science experiments, build bridges, learn digitally, and write or act out stories. In Pre-K, your child learns the foundations of abstract thinking so that your child can make connections between known and unknown situations, enabling them to be exceptionally gifted problem solvers and imaginative children.

Our staff don’t just care for your child. They also stimulate curiosity and wonder in your child in these ways:

• Building brain power by learning the cognitive skills for simple addition, subtraction and science experiments
• Building strong bodies through dedicated time for movement and outdoor play each day
• Building social skills by practising conflict resolution, kindness and respect for others
• Imagining and verbalising stories that have a beginning, middle and end
• Showing phonological understanding, alphabet awareness, writing and reading skills
• Nurturing creative expression through several art mediums available
• Developing an understanding of themselves and the world around them

Children at this age approach the world with a wide-eyed sense of wonder, constructing meaning from every new experience. Our program nurtures this by creating an environment that allows your child a chance to wonder freely. In doing so, we help them become passionate and driven learners.

At Meadows Academy, the K1 program nurtures a child’s innate capacity to wonder by creating opportunities for them to be inquisitive, think crticially, and be creative. We call these ‘magic moments’ and believe they are vital to a child’s developmental growth that can not be achieved by a rigorous academics-only program.

We cultivate a sense of wonder in the following ways:

• Building instruction
  around your child’s
  questions
• Valuing unconventional
  ideas
• Prioritizing ‘magic moments

Our K2 classrooms are always buzzing with activity and are full of fun. The teachers read to the children individually and in small groups on a routine basis, and they incorporate dynamic movement, dance, and music into their lessons. Our students gain a solid foundation for their future schooling whether they are outside playing in the sandbox or inside working on a project together.

The K2 program is designed to motivate your child to learn through experiences, explorations and self-discovery. By the end of K2, your child should be able to grasp these literacy and numeracy skills:

• Read and understand simple text types
• Express opinions coherently and confidently
• Write at a comfortable pace
• Craft basic sentences
• Simple matching and sorting,
• Comparing, ordering and patterning
• One-to-one correspondence
• Numbers related to real objects
• Subitising numbers

Our K3 program is academically based with an emphasis on STREAM through rich literature integration, small group instruction and meaningful learning experiences. Letter knowledge and beginning reading skills are taught through thematic units as well as creative play opportunities. Kindergartners will move on to the first grade feeling safe and secure as part of the Meadows Academy community. The academic exploration and play from their kindergarten years instill in children the foundation for a lifelong love of learning.

In our K3 program, we:

• work on word order
• guide students in writing simple sentences
• work on blending letter sounds and
  segmenting words to assist your child with
  reading and spelling
• introduce more complex vocabulary and
  sentence starters that will help your child
  express themselves confidently
• introduce other parts of speech such as
  adjectives and prepositions
• hold show and tell sessions to
  build self-confidence when speaking

Children who have progressed through all the grades at Meadows Academy are anticipated to understand at least 20,000 words by first grade, possess impressive spelling skills and be quick with math. Although some skills will resemble those that your six year old learned in kindergarten, 1st grade is mostly about mastering lessons previously taught. By the end of 1st grade, our program reinforces your child to:

Reading

• Expand sight word vocabulary
• Recall the sequence of events in oral and written stories
• Discuss story elements such as plot, character, events, and setting
• Understand basic punctuation
• Identify the main idea and details in a story
• Print legibly
• Recognize single and plural forms of nouns
• Write in complete sentences
• Differentiate between fiction and nonfiction stories
• Memorize and correctly spell between 130-150 words

Math

• Understand inequalities
• Recognize and write numbers up to 100
• Count by 2s, 5s, and 10s to 100
• Mentally add numbers to 10
• Add and subtract to 20
• Add and subtract with pennies, nickels,
  dimes, and quarters
• Tell time to the hour and half-hour
• Recognize shapes
• Identify, describe, and reproduce patterns with
  number, shapes, colors, or words
• Uses simple graphs to record information
• Recognize simple mathematical symbols
• Read thermometers and use measuring tools like rulers

Social Studies

• Locate Tanzania, the seven continents, and the four oceans on a large map or globe
• Construct and interpret simple maps with cardinal directions and map key
• Demonstrate awareness of current news
• Participate in group decision making
• Understand traditions that reflect American ideals and influences from diverse cultures within the nation
• Create charts and timelines demonstrating an understanding of past and present
• Recognize shared values and goals as students in the same community, despite differences in backgrounds

Science

• Use tools such as a magnifying glass, ruler, and balancing scale
• Learn the basic needs of living things by caring for animals in class
• Conduct simple, hands-on experiments
• Explore the senses — hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste
• Explore the life cycle of living things, such as frogs or butterflies

In Grade 2, your child’s learning is accelerated to become more complex and comprehensive in every subject area. In 2nd grade, your child becomes a more experienced writer and reader by practising their skills in more complex and comprehensive ways. Students read bigger and more complicated books and write longer and more in-depth pieces. Second graders also pursue projects that involve research and critical thinking

The program is designed to help your child become a more advanced reader such that he or she:

• Reads more complex words, such as two-syllable words
• Reads words with common prefixes and suffixes, for example: pre-, re-, un-, -able, -ad, and -er.
• Reads grade-appropriate, irregularly spelled words
• Reads a variety of texts including fiction, nonfiction, fables, and poetry
• Understands the structure of a story, specifically the purpose of beginnings (introducing the text) and endings (concluding the text).
• Understands the most important details of a text—its main purpose and the “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “why,” and “how.”
• Talks about characters’ responses, main events, lessons learned, and important ideas or concepts.
• Begins to make connections within and between texts.
• Compares at least two different versions of the same story, such as two versions of a classic fairy tale.
• Reads at grade level with correct accuracy, pace, expression, and comprehension.
• Self-corrects mistakes and re-reads when necessary

After mastering literacy skills in earlier grades, 3rd graders become better and more independent readers. Third-grade reading focuses on teaching kids how to think and talk about what they read in deeper and more detailed ways. Students read longer texts and fictional chapter books.

Many reading lessons in 3rd grade are dedicated to writing and talking about the meanings, lessons, and important ideas in texts. Third graders are encouraged to develop their own points of view about books they read and to discuss their ideas about a text or characters. Series books are important in 3rd grade because they allow students to make connections between different books and talk about how certain characters develop. As 3rd graders explore a greater range of books and longer texts, they become more fluent readers and learn to read, define, and pronounce complex words.

In our Grade 3 program, your child will be trained to:

• Use the text and context to determine the meaning of words
• Become interpretive: use a lot more reasoning, perspective and analysis
• Express their own point of view about characters or a text
• Conduct simple experiments independently and in groups, and participate in teacher-guided complex ones.
• Work cooperatively on group projects with other kids
• Demonstrate increasingly organized and logical thinking
• Understand the difference between a literal and non-literal text such as metaphors and analogies.
• Write neatly and legibly
• Write a one-page opinion paper, report, or story with an introduction and a conclusion
• Use a keyboard to type what they write
• Read third grade-level books aloud with expression and comprehension
• Use strategies, such as looking at prefixes, suffixes, and root words, to read and understand new and unfamiliar words
• Multiply and divide with numbers up to 100
• Tell time to the nearest minute
• Identify places on a map using directions, borders, longitude and latitude lines, the equator, and the North and South Poles.
• Know the basic physical components of the earth, such as landforms, water, climate, and weather.