Full-Day Preschool & Pre-Kindergarten at Westside School

Boy looking through a handmade telescope out of recyled materials

The Foundations for Lifelong Learning

Westside School invites children to embark on their educational journey with our full-day preschool and pre-kindergarten programs.

Please Note: Pre-Kindergarten is for children who turn four by September 1.

Our emergent, play-based curriculum focuses on experiential learning, fostering the social-emotional foundations essential for academic growth.

With a rich history in early childhood education, Westside provides an enriched environment where students are empowered to actively participate in their learning. Our teachers observe the spontaneous interests of students and guide them towards projects and activities that spark their natural curiosity.

Classroom learning stations, combined with whole and small group activities, promote each child’s social and academic development. In addition to their daily classroom experience, students participate in physical education, performing arts, visual arts, and world languages.

In Westside's Early Learning Program, Play is learning. They are not separate activities but intertwined. What looks like play to us is actually our youngest students learning to make sense of the world around them, building social and cognitive skills, and constructing knowledge that they will use as they move into kindergarten, through 8th grade, and beyond.

After starting the day with Morning Meeting, children enjoy recess, snack time, and then transition into work time. During work time, children engage with open-ended materials and interact with their peers.

The classroom offers a variety of play options, each designed to be enjoyable while helping students develop and practice different skills. Learn more about some of our play areas below.

DRAMATIC PLAY

Preschool girl with sparkly sunglasses and a bird mask.

In dramatic play, it isn’t uncommon to see students dressing up, cooking a meal for their friends in our kitchen area, and creating all sorts of fun scenarios, like packing up and boarding a plane for a trip to Hawaii!

Children Learn and Practice:

Social-Emotional Skills - Self-regulation of emotions and actions, compromise and conflict resolution skills, and allows them to process emotions and personal experiences.
Cognitive Skills - Coordinate a plan and assign and accept roles and build abstract thinking skills.
Literacy - Build expressive and receptive language skills, build vocabulary, and explore oral language.

BLOCK PLAY

Twp preschoolers with a teacher building with wood blocks.

In the block area, students work together or on their own to create large structures, complete with ramps, windows, and doors. As they work, they share ideas about their plan, what the structure will end up being, and the blocks that they need to build it. Block building is not only fun, but supports problem-solving, dramatic play, social-emotional intelligence, as well as concepts of math and science through play.

“I try to build a police station in the block area. I use some curves and some triangles and some squares. I stable my building on the flat floor so it can stand and get tall. You have to make police stations tall, so it has to be super stable.”

Children Learn and Practice:

Problem-solving - A child may have a specific idea or structure in mind and have to figure out how to build it, what shapes to use and how to make it stable.
Mathematics - Concepts such as measurement, comparison, counting, fractions, estimation, symmetry, patterning, and shapes are all practiced during black play.
Science - Children test their hypotheses and experiment with cause and effect, making predictions, stability and balance, gravity, and the relationship between materials.
Social-Emotional Skills - Block play supports children in taking turns, sharing ideas, compromising, conflict resolution, cooperate with others, increases attention span, and builds self-esteem.

ART TABLE

Process Art is a big part of the Pre-K Curriculum. Process Art is less about the final product and more about the experiences and observations the children have while engaging with the materials.

At the art table, children create beautiful, swirly designs of glue on black paper. After creating the design, they sprinkle salt on top and shake off the excess. The final step in this art exploration is to paint the salt with liquid watercolor. As the first drop of paint hits the dry salt, a student exclaims “Look! The salt is sucking it up!” the student next to them exclaims “Oh my gosh the paint is moving. The salt is making it move! Let’s do another color!” as they quickly dip their brushes into another color and paint.

Through Process Art Children Learn:

Social-Emotional Skills - Children relax, focus, feel successful, and can express their feelings.
Language and Literacy - Children may choose to discuss their art and add print to it on their own or by dictating to a teacher.
Cognitive Skills - Children compare, predict, plan, and problem solve.
Physical Skills - Children use small motor skills to paint, write, glue, use clay, and make collages.
Science - Children test their hypotheses and experiment with cause and effect, making predictions.

LEARNING AT WESTSIDE

Lower School

SPECIALISTS

Early Learning at Westside

Specialist Classes

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