Early childhood program at St. Rocco has it all

As the 2014-15 calendar winds down, St. Rocco School’s early childhood program is already anticipating another successful year next year, for which enrollment has already begun.

With the newest component of the program, the three-year-old program, having rolled out in January, the students and staff of the threes, fours and fives have been working well together and integrating successfully with the elementary and middle grades at the school.

“The students in the early childhood program are fully included in all of our school’s Catholic identity and value programs and all of our religious events,” Principal Lorraine Moschella said. “They also have field trips, professional development in-house and out for staff, and they take part in art, music, and physical education. The teachers are also integrating technology into their curriculum through the use of iPads.”

Brenda Tavares, a teacher in the four-year-old program, described the comprehensive science curriculum that is used.

“We do a full science program, which includes themes such as ‘All About Me,’ the five senses, animals and their habitats, and planets and outer space,” she said.

Jessica Rosace, a teacher in the five-year-old program, describes some of their hands-on science studies.

“We have worked with worms, goldfish and snails, bugs and caterpillars,” she said.

“Pre-K, threes and fours all use the same curriculum, but we adapt the progress reports and report cards for the lower levels,” said Alyssa DelVecchio, who teaches in the new three year-old program. “We just started the threes in January.”

In addition to language skills such as letters and sight words, most of the fives are reading, according to Rosace.

“They have been using new Read Every Day [RED] folders, reading at home and bringing the folders back for a sticker,” she said. “We started with easier books, but now they’re moving on to the more challenging books. The RED folders also include activities such as a sight word hunt or an activity that might focus on vowel sounds or phonics. Kindergarten has also started spelling tests on their sight words and will be taking them from now through the end of the year.”

In the area of mathematics, the students in the early childhood programs have been working with money, identifying coins and their values, shapes, graphing, patterns, one-to-one correspondence, addition and subtraction.

“All of the topics go with our themes at the time, such as space,” Rosace said.

Another big hit has been the new class friend, Bear, as the students are allowed to take Bear home for a night with a book to read.

“We do a lot of writing, using prompts to make class books,” Rosace said.

The teachers all noted that the students take field trips to places such as the pumpkin patch and zoo, as well as participate in all of the liturgical celebrations, pageants and school-wide special events.

“Our curriculum is a great deal of learning through play,” Rosace said.

For more information about the early childhood programs at St. Rocco School, call 401-944-2993 or stop by the school at 931 Atwood Ave. in Johnston.