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The LEAP Curriculum

Curriculum Matrix For Our Toddler, Preschool, & Transitional Kindergarten Programs in MA

Below you will find a brief overview of the LEAP curriculum goals that children work on throughout the year in different areas. Carefully chosen and planned activities are used to incorporate learning in each area listed below.

Click on the drop-downs below to learn more about these goals and see pictures of these activities in action. To find out more details regarding our curriculum and our conveniently located preschool programs in MA, please contact our Admissions office to schedule a visit!

 

The LEAP Curriculum Provides an Immersive Preschool Learning Experience Across a Wide Range of Educational Goals:

Young Toddler/Toddler

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Lower Preschool

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Upper Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten

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Young Toddler/Toddler Curriculum

Social/Emotional Skills

Goals:

  • Feels secure in relationships with others
  • Displays pride in accomplishments
  • Experiences and expresses a range of emotions
  • Progresses in regulating his or her feelings and behavior
  • Begins to learn ways to say good-bye to parents
Learning Skills

Goals:

  • Follows simple directions
  • Persists with trial-and-error approaches to solve a problem
  • Creates and carries out plan for solving simple problems
  • Begins to understand that certain behaviors can cause results
Math

Goals:

  • Shows interest in matching and sorting 
  • Shows awareness of simple patterns
  • Matches and sorts according to color, shape or size
  • Recognizes and creates simple patterns
Science

Goals:

  • Experiments with various wet and dry materials to discover their properties
  • Discovers living things found in nature
  • Asks questions and develops inquiry skills
  • Observes and identifies living things and begins to identify their basic needs
Imaginative Play Skills

Goals:

  • Actively participates in dramatizing familiar activities
  • Begins to use pretend and dramatic play to act out familiar scenes
Literacy & Language

Goals:

 
Verbal

  • Demonstrates understanding of spoken (or signed) language
  • Develops expressive language
  • Engages in social communication
  • Demonstrates phonological awareness

Reading

  • Shows motivation to read
  • Increases knowledge about books
  • Recognizes familiar print
  • Demonstrates knowledge that a symbol can represent something else

Writing

  • Makes purposeful marks on paper
  • Understands writing is a way of communicating
  • Develops emergent writing skills
Group Skills

Goals:

  • Is exposed and encouraged to participate in short group activities
  • Begins to recognize individual preferences and differences
  • Begins to explore and become aware of the immediate community
  • Notices similarities and differences in others
Physical Skills

Goals:

  • Develops large motor skills such as jumping, climbing up and down, throwing and hopping
  • Is exposed to a variety of sensory materials to develop fine motor skills; including sand, water, shaving cream, and finger paints
  • Coordinates eye and hand movements
  • Controls small muscles in hand
Expressive Arts

Goals:

  • Is exposed to a variety of art media to develop fine motor skills; including paints, crayons, scissors and paper
  • Responds to and participates in music, rhythm and songs

Lower Preschool Curriculum

Social/Emotional Skills

Goals:

  • Exhibit confidence in own abilities
  • Able to express needs and feeling in an age appropriate way
  • Form meaningful relationships with peers
  • Show an interest in sharing toys and materials
  • Works cooperatively with peers to complete a task
  • Respond positively when conflict resolution skills are modeled by a teacher
Learning Skills

Goals:

  • Demonstrate interest in exploring
  • Show curiosity and a desire to learn
  • Use creativity and imagination
Math

Goals:

  • Participate in sorting, comparing, and describing activities
  • Connect many kinds of concrete objects and actions to numbers
  • Classify objects by similarities and differences
  • Begin to recognize a sequence of events (beginning, middle, end)
  • Use concrete objects to solve simple math problems (addition & subtraction) using comparative language (more than, less than, equal to)
Science

Goals:

  • Prediction about changes in materials or objects based on past experiences
  • Manipulate a variety of familiar and unfamiliar objects to observe, describe, and compare their properties using appropriate language
  • Use their sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste to explore their environment using sensory vocabulary
  • Experiment with concept of balance
  • Explore and identify simple machines through play
Imaginative Play Skills

Goals:

  • Assume a pretend role
  • Pretend with props and objects
  • Interact with other children in imaginative play
Literacy & Language

Goals:

Verbal

  • Generate questions and gathers information to answer their questions in various ways
  • Makes up stories
  • Engage actively in read-aloud activities 

Writing

  • Use writing tools for self-expression
  • Begin to recognize own name
  • Become aware of print and symbols in the classroom environment
  • Listen to, recite, sing, and dramatize a variety of age-appropriate literature
  • Develop familiarity with the forms of alphabet letters, print, and letter forms
  • Use own words or illustrations to describe experiences, tell imaginative stories, or communicate information
  • Makes increasingly representational drawings
  • Uses emergent writing skills for many purposes

Reading

  • Enjoy listening to stories and looking at books
  • Able to listen to a story and respond to questions about it
  • Demonstrate the ability to use a book (Director, page-turning)
Group Skills

Goals:

  • Able to participate in small group experiences (games, table activities, freeplay)
  • Able to participate in large group experiences (circle, specialists, story time)
Physical Skills

Goals:

  • Demonstrates increasing gross motor control and coordination
  • Demonstrates increased balance and agility
  • Uses small muscles for self-help skills such as pouring and zipping
  • Uses classroom materials, such as manipulatives and toys to develop hand grasp and flexibility, finger dexterity
Expressive Arts

Goals:

  • Uses creativity and imagination
  • Express themselves freely through movements
  • Play instruments using different beats, tempos, dynamics and interpretation
  • Explore variety of materials of media to create two- and three-dimensional artwork
  • Uses creativity and imagination to explore Theatre Arts, Movement & Dance, Music

Upper Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Curriculum

Social/Emotional Skills

Goals:

  • To exhibit a positive attitude
  • To demonstrate cooperation and prosocial behavior
Learning Skills

Goals:

  • Demonstrates an interest in exploring classroom materials
  • Uses multiple strategies and planning skills to accomplish goals
  • Shows curiosity and a desire to learn
  • Uses creativity and imagination
Math

Goals:

  • Recognizes patterns and is able to repeat them
  • Makes comparisons (more/less, large/small)
  • Demonstrates appropriate number sense and counting skills
Science

Goals:

  • Record observations and share ideas through representations/drawings
  • Compare and contrast natural materials using descriptive language
  • Observe and describe predictable life cycles
  • Observe and describe natural habits and basic needs of plants and animals
  • Demonstrates an ability to predict cause and effect outcome
Imaginative Play Skills

Goals:

  • Interacts with other children in imaginative play
  • Sustains imaginative play
Literacy & Language

Goals:

 

Verbal

  • Talks with other children during daily activities
  • Participates in group discussions appropriately
  • Engage actively in read-aloud activities by asking questions, offering ideas, predicting or retelling
  • Makes up stories
  • Generate questions and gather information to gains answers in various ways

Reading

  • Recognizes letters in own name and most other letters in the alphabet
  • Recognizes own name and other sight words
  • Identifies rhyming words
  • Listen to, recite, sing, and dramatize a variety of age-appropriate literature
  •  Develop familiarity with the forms of alphabet letters, awareness of print, and letter forms.
  • Use emergent writing skills to make letters in many settings and for many purposes
  • Use their own words or illustrations to describe their experiences, tell imaginative stories, or communicate information
  • Listen to, identify, and manipulate language sounds to develop auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness.

Writing

  • Makes increasingly representational drawings
  • Imitates recognizable letters and numbers
  • Demonstrates an interest in using writing for a purpose (making signs, sending letters)
  • Use emergent writing skills to make letters for many purposes
  • Listen to, identify, and manipulate language sounds to develop auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness.
  • Writes own name
Group Skills

Goals:

  • Able to follow 2-3 step directions
  • To become aware of schedules and routines:
  • To demonstrate self-help skills
Physical Skills

Goals:

  • Throws and object in an intended direction
  • Build upper body strength and stability to gain controlled movements of shoulders
  • Strengthens hand grasp and flexibility
  • Use hand-eye coordination, visual perception and tracking, and visual motor skills in play activities
Expressive Arts

Goals:

  • Use dramatic play, costumes and props to pretend to be someone else
  • Use props to explore space and movement
  • Experiment with the use of texture, shapes and forms, pattern and symmetry in artwork
  • Uses creativity and imagination to explore Theatre Arts, Movement & Dance, Music