A Journey Toward Kindergarten Readiness

The Minnesota Department of Education articulates specific expectations for children as they enter school. Preschool opportunities for early learning through family, caregiving, and meaningful education settings before Kindergarten increase a child’s ability to exhibit age-appropriate skills, behaviors, and beginning knowledge. Our preschool program prepares your preschool child for Kindergarten and for life as a learner.

You will know your preschool child is ready for Kindergarten when he or she exhibits knowledge and skills across multiple learning areas. These include appropriate social and emotional skills, math and science, physical and motor growth, and exposure to the arts, language, literacy, technology, and communication. These outcomes form the core of our early childhood education curriculum at Holy Cross.

Why is Holy Cross a great choice for your preschool child?

We’ve been educating the children in our communities for over a century. Today, as in the decades past, our philosophy of learning remains unchanged. Learning begins with a strong foundation of skills and knowledge, character begins with values and the cultivation of virtue. You can be confident that your child’s learning at Holy Cross will be joyful, faithful, and successful.

Learning for Kindergarten Readiness:  Ages 4 - 5

• Social and Emotional Self-Regulation

Appropriate emotional control, applying rules to situations, understanding personal responsibility, positive relationships, group participation
 

• Physical Development

Traveling skills, balancing skills, gross- and fine-motor skills expansion
 

• Language

Listening and understanding, vocabulary and expressive language, conversation, other communication skills, social rules
 

• Cognitive Development

Approaches to learning, improving attention over time, problem solving, remembering, and connecting experiences with strategies, classification and regrouping, symbolic thinking, and representation
 

• Literacy

Phonetics, alphabet sequencing, upper and lower case letters, book skills, comprehension and listening skills, writing our name
 

• Mathematics

Number concepts, counting to 20, sets, less and more, early addition and subtraction, number relationships, measurement, patterns, special relationships, and shapes
 

• Science

Scientific inquiry skills, studying living things, physical properties of objects and materials, Earth’s environment
 

• Technology

Technology tools, their differences, resources, appropriate uses
 

• Social Studies

Understanding of self and the family, people and how they live, change and growth, time measurement, geography, and maps
 

• Arts

Visual arts, music, dance, drama    
 

• Faith

Knowledge of God, prayers, learning about saints, holy and feast days, Bible stories, daily devotional. 
Weekly Catechesis of the Good Shepard
 

• Daily Schedule

Our school day for pre-school students runs from 8:00 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Students may enroll in a half-day or full-day program.

Schedule

Arrival/ Morning Work/Announcements                  15 min

Group Time                                                                     20 min

Area/Small Group Art                                                     60 min

Writing/Reading                                                              15 min

Snack/ Religion                                                               30 min

Outside Play                                                                    30 min

Lunch                                                                              30 min

Nap/Rest Time                                                               60 min

Math/Science                                                                  20 min

Snack                                                                              15 min

Outside                                                                            30 min

Music Class Twice a Week for 45 min

PE Class Once a Week for 30 min

Art Class Once a Week for 25 min

Mass Once a Week for 45 min

Atrium Once a Week for 60 min

Chapel Time First Friday of the Month for 25 min