3 to 5 Year Old Programs at the Rainbow Academy Child Care Center Carol Stream Illinois

(Program includes Preschool Program from 9:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.) *

There are numerous concepts and developmental skills that a child must master if he/she is to become successful in future academic skills. A child needs to develop as a total person. Rainbow Academy's teachers are dedicated to helping your child develop socially, emotionally, intellectually and physically.

Children learn most effectively by EXPERIENCING their environment. Our curriculum includes the use of Learning Centers which affords each child the opportunity to work at their own pace and level of ability. As you may observe, the equipment in your child's classroom, and throughout the Center, is designed and selected to encourage creativity and imagination. Your child will be encouraged to make decisions, solve problems and learn to give willingly and receive graciously. Most importantly, your child will develop a positive self-image and self-confidence.

Activities such as cutting, pasting, putting puzzles together, along with involvement with various other small manipulatives, promotes pre-reading skills. For example, placing pegs on the left side of the pegboard encourages left-to-right eye movements, thus developing the left-to-right sequencing necessary for reading.

Music is an essential part of our program. Music fosters auditory discrimination and auditory memory skills important for future spelling skills. The songs that the children commit to memory strengthen their ability to follow directions and increase their attention span. Music is one of the most important avenues in which our preschoolers develop and solidify their foundation for future academic success.

Math skills and fine motor coordination, necessary for future writing skills, are strengthened by activities such as measuring ingredients for cooking projects or pouring sand and water at our sand and water tables. Pegs, blocks and small manipulatives are used to reinforce pattern building, counting and sorting skills. Passing out snacks or forks at lunch teaches one-to-one math relationships.

Rainbow subscribes to Weekly Reader magazine which is distributed to each child on a weekly basis. Our teachers use this magazine to reinforce readiness skills in areas such as math, reading, science and social studies.

Our teachers are continually working on skill assessments with each child. We begin evaluating and assessing skills in September and hold Parent/Teacher conferences at the beginning and at the end of the school year. This is a time when parents will be able to meet with their child's teacher to see their child's progress and to discuss individualized objectives and goals projected for the coming months.

Our teachers are dedicated to helping every child develop the skills that are so necessary to be successful in future academic endeavors and to become a confident, self-assured and well rounded person.

Rainbow's Pre-Kindergarten students exceed all local school district kindergarten standards!

We know what your child needs and we are dedicated to fulfill those needs.

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"If you watch a child of 3, you will see that he/she is always playing with something. This means that he/she is working out and making conscious something that his/her unconscious mind had earlier absorbed. Through this outward experience, in the guise of a game, he/she examines those things and impressions that he/she has taken in unconsciously. He/she becomes fully conscious and constructs the future man/woman, by means of his/her activities--He/she does it through his/her hands, by experience, first in play, then through work." (Montessori, 1967, p. 27)