Children enrolling in the 4-Year-Old Class are 4 years old by September 1, if they will be going on to a 5K school district class after Preschool. We also welcome children who turn four years old before December 2024 as a first 4-year-old experience before attending their school district 4K program.  The Preschool administration will collaborate with parents to find the best class placement for your preschooler.

4 Year Old  Class is four mornings per week, Monday through Thursday. Monday and Thursday is 9-12 noon; Tuesday and Wednesday is 9-1pm and includes Lunch Bunch, Bring your lunch from home, and additional theme-based activities.

St. John’s Preschool is part of the Children, Youth and their Families ministry at St. John’s Lutheran Church. We are a Christ-centered preschool where prayers and Christian Education time are part of each day. Holidays, including religious holidays, are celebrated. We do recognize, respect and encourage a culturally diverse experience for all children.

St. John’s Preschool teaches a Playing to Learn curriculum that features activities to facilitate learning and growing. Skills are age-appropriate and are introduced, taught on a daily basis and reinforced throughout the school year. Our teachers guide learning through planned, fun engaging activities that nurture each child’s development in all the ways that are important to them. Our teachers recognize that each child learns at their own rate.

This is a general guideline to St. John’s 4-Year-Old Class:

Social Skills

Making friends and maintaining friendships, playing cooperatively with other children, turn-taking in play, and participating in social activities.

Language Skills - Expressive

Speaking skills; expressing wants, needs and thoughts verbally, using language to interact with peers, a range of vocabulary, length of typical sentences, retelling details of a story, using parts of speech such as pronouns, using tense appropriately, using appropriate words, not filler words, and using speech that can be understood.

Language Skills - Receptive

Listening skills; paying attention in the presence of background noise, recognizing common sounds in the environment, discriminating speech sounds, responding to verbal requests, recalling spoken instructions, completing sound or word patterns, and following 3-step directions.

Early Literacy Skills

Interest in reading activities, knowledge of parts of a book, e.g., author wrote the story, illustrator drew the pictures, “reading” from left to right, top to bottom, interest in writing their name, remembering names of letters, learning letter sounds, determining if two letter or word sounds are the same, clapping out the number of syllables in a word, and understanding of which words rhyme.

Early Math Skills

Naming numbers, counting in proper sequence, understanding one-to-one correspondence, counting objects accurately, determining which group has more or less and which object comes next, determining patterns, understanding basic time sequence e.g., before and after and time concepts e.g., yesterday, today, tomorrow, and understanding of basic spatial orientation e.g., under, over, up, down.

Small Muscle Skills

Eye-hand coordination, holding a pencil, crayon or marker and copying from a flat surface in front of them, drawing simple shapes e.g., circle, square, and exploring materials of different textures.

Large Muscle Skills

Balance, speed and agility, large muscle coordination, and sense of direction e.g., up, down, beside.

Self-regulation Skills

Adjusting to change in routine, functioning independently of adult attention, consistency of behavior and mood, labeling emotions of others, showing a range of emotions, learning to express anger and frustration appropriately, understanding the consequences of behaviors, using planning prior to activities, using words to solve problems with peers, persisting in difficult tasks, and concentrating for brief periods.

Self-care Skills

Putting on, taking off and hanging up coat, eating without difficulty, drinking from cup, using a napkin/wipe for hands and face, washing hands before eating and after toileting, toileting independently with supervision.

Classroom Skills

Following the daily classroom routine, transitioning from one activity to another, and paying attention during group activities. Early Three-year-old requires modeling or demonstration along with verbal directions and recognizing common sounds in the environment.

The average class size for our 4-Year-Old Class is ten children.

Yes, we always welcome new students throughout the school year based on available openings.

There is Snack Time in the middle of each preschool day.

St. John’s Preschool Healthy Snack Program provides nutritional foods that children will enjoy each day at snack time.  The Healthy Snack List is posted weekly in each classroom. A complete list of the foods and recipes are available by request.

As educators, we recognize the importance of healthy eating as part of how Preschoolers are growing and developing.  Research shows that proper nutrition including wholesome and minimally-processed foods helps brain development, better focus and attention as well as instilling good eating habits. Many foods will be offered during snack time that will include a variety of fruit and vegetables, grains and protein.

St. John’s Preschool is a peanut-free and tree-nut free school.

We recognize and work with parents of children with food allergies and/or dietary restrictions.

Birthday and holiday snacks may include some sweet treats.