PreJunior Kindergarten
PreJunior Kindergarten, or PJK, is a private pre-kindergarten in Jacksonville, Fl, for children who turn 3 before September 1.
About Our Program
Meeting the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical needs of our young friends is at the heart of our mission. JCDS prepares students for a healthy and productive lifetime of intellectual exploration, character development, and social responsibility. Our thoughtfully planned curriculum reflects the school’s mission statement and early childhood and neuroscience research. From the research we understand the importance of whole child development: social/emotional, physical, and cognitive. Our practice reflects our mission. Instead of a checklist of skills and rote learning, we approach children’s early learning experiences with the understanding that the rudimentary level of the child’s early learning experiences will impact their future learning and understanding.
How do you evaluate a preschool?
PJK Highlights
• Learning that takes place in an engaging, active, fun environment.
• Carefully planned activities that enhance higher level thinking skills rather than rote memorization.
• Concrete hands-on experiences that are the foundation of abstract learning and application.
• Literacy, math, science, social studies, music, and art are imbedded into learning experiences.
• Music/movement, Spanish, library, and music with degreed specialists in their respective fields.
• Daily Physical Education.
• Differentiation to meet the needs of individual children.
• Five day program with options for length of day • (noon, 1:30 p.m., 3:00 p.m., and beyond).
What can boost a young child's brain?
What Sets Our Program Apart From Other Three- and Four-year-old Programs?
In addition to all of the above:
Degreed teachers. It is our belief that young children in preschool programs benefit from the expertise of teachers who have the background and ongoing educational experience required to meet the needs of young children. Our lead and assistant teachers are required to have college degrees and continuing professional development in the field of early childhood.
If you are interested, call or email for a tour: 904-641-6644 or jwitte@jcds.com.
Evaluating a Preschool
“Evaluate a school according to how child-focused vs. academic it is. A play-based Curriculum is especially beneficial for later engagement in school. Kids in child-focused schools, rather than in didactic programs that spend more time teaching academic skills directly, show more motivation in school. They also demonstrate more academic confidence, rating their own abilities more highly and expressing greater expectations for their own success in academic tasks. Kids in child- or play-based preschools show less dependency on adults for permission and approval, are more proud of their accomplishments, and worry less about school. Kids who attend preschools that allow some freedom to initiate activities and complete them without pressure to follow a particular formula, or to get “correct” answers are more likely to choose challenging activities and academic tasks than do their peers in didactic programs.” (raising HAPPINESS, Christine Carter, Ph.D., 2010)
Neuroscientists encourage multi sensory experiences for the young child’s developing brain. Look for educational centers that provide stimulation, such as water tables, sand tables, varying media for artwork that will offer children the opportunity to develop different areas of their brains. ("The Developing Brain Birth to Age Eight," Marilee Sprenger, 2008)
A Ten Point List of What Can Boost A Child's Brain Power
The McCormick Tribune Foundation (1987)
1. Social interaction makes a child feel they are worth spending time with.
2. Greeting a child with a gentle touch on the shoulder or shaking their hand and addressing them by name.
3. Building a stable relationship.
4. A safe, healthy environment where the child feels like they belong.
5. Giving the child doable challenges with appropriate feedback and positive reinforcement.
6. Quality care with trained professionals.
7. The more children are communicated with, the more they understand. From listening comes speaking, and from speaking comes reading.
8. Learning environments that focus on play as learning.
9. Music provides patterns for the brain. It also affects mood.
10. Read to children every day. Show pictures and let them make up stories. Write down their stories to show them how language works.
The Value of Play
by Rae Pica
Isn’t it ironic that a country whose constitution allows for the pursuit of happiness now feels a collective guilt about the very idea of anything fun? How did this happen? When did we begin placing so much priority on productivity and so little on leisure or on having a good time? Even given the Puritan work ethic, life in America has become so unbalanced that one side of the seesaw is pretty much grounded. But why must we insist that our children, who by their very nature are playful, share these particular values? Why are we so anxious for our children to “act like adults?”
But wait, you may be thinking, kids play plenty these days. They play T-ball, soccer, even tennis...
Yes, these are forms of play. But the true definition of the word, as it applies to children, is that it be child-directed, open-ended, and intrinsically motivated. It also focuses more on the process than the product, which cannot technically be said about T-ball, soccer, or tennis, where home runs, goals, and points are typically the focus.
However, if we really must have “product” - that is, results - from our children’s activities, play has plenty of that to offer, too. For one thing, many experts believe that adult personality is built upon child’s play. According to Playing for Keeps, all of the skills children need to develop into functioning, productive adults originate form play. These skills include literacy, mathematical reasoning, creativity, and social skills. Among the social skills learned, the experts tell us, is the ability to share, cooperate, negotiate, compromise, make and revise rules, and take the perspective of others.
Surely we can see the value in such benefits - that these abilities will serve our children better than the ability to name the states’ capitals! But if that’s not enough benefit derived, Joan Isenberg and Mary Renck Jalongo, authors of Creative Expression and Play in the Early Childhood Curriculum, argue that play:
• enables children to explore their world,
• develop cultural understandings.
• helps children express their thoughts and feelings. and
• provides opportunities to meet and solve problems.
Additionally, play enables children to deal with stress and to cope with fears they can’t yet understand or express. today’s young children are exposed to so much so early and must cope with much more stress than their predecessors ever did. Play gives them a necessary emotional release and helps them make sense of everything they’re experiencing. And as Playing for Keeps points out, when young children act out emotion-laden scenes in their play, such as reassuring a doll that mommy will return, they learn to cope with fears and gain the self-control that will bring them to the next state of development.
Writing in Education Week, master teacher Sheila Flaxman states that today’s young children are controlled by the “expectations, whims, and rules of adults. Play is the only time they can take control of their world.” She goes on to state: “The almost daily media reports of out-of-control young people should be our warning that something is amiss in early childhood. “Indeed, retired psychiatrist Stuart Brown, founder of the Institute for play in Carmel Valley, California, was quoted in Time Magazine as saying that “play deprivation” can lead to “depression, hostility, and the loss of things that make us human beings.”
For a great many contemporary adult human beings, balance is a word that has come to symbolize something out of reach. Something desired but elusive, as we work long hours, tend to families, and spend what little free time we have as productively as possible. What used to be considered leisure time (remember lazy Sunday afternoons?) must now be filled. It doesn’t matter whether it’s with recreation,” chores of one kind or another, or shuttling the children here and there. Just so long as we can say we didn’t waste it. “What did you do this weekend?” has become a question to be reckoned with on Monday mornings. It demands a smart answer. Just as surely as did our eighth-grade algebra teacher.
If you’re an adult who’s been giving balance some consideration - who’s tired of the treadmill - perhaps you find yourself looking back fondly in what now seems to be an idyllic childhood; back to the days when time stretched endlessly before you. Back when there were few demands on that time. And, except for summers, weekends, and days when the darkness fell too early, there always seemed to be plenty of it.
Shouldn’t today’s children have similar memories to cling to when they become adults? Let’s make sure they have quiet moments of solitude - child-initiated and directed activity... a break from the relentless competition so prevalent in society. Let’s make sure they have a chance to play!
