Kirkmont Pre-School
Pat Bennington, Director

The summer pre-school program has gotten off to a terrific start. The children will be enjoying five weeks of fun-filled activities as well as reinforcing learning from the previous school year. We will be having special programs from the library and the Narrows. We will also have a special visit from one of Kirkmont’s own Master Gardeners.

Our first week, the children explored the wonders of the seashore. They painted a seashell and explored the beauty of a coral reef. The second week, the children studied our mysterious universe. They learned about and did crafts related to the sun, moon and stars.
The rest of the summer, will be busy as well. We will have Muncie Mouth week, where the children will talk about nutrition. The children will study plants and foliage during Earth week. We will end the summer with Rivers week where the children will learn about fresh waters and their plant and fish life.

All-in-all, this will be an exciting summer for the children filled with fun and learning.

We are still enrolling for fall, so if you have a child of pre-school age that you would like to have attend Kirkmont pre-school, please contact the pre-school office at 426-5476. Have a great summer!

Preschool Home

Calendar

Our Days

Parents Place

Policies and Procedures

Health and Safety

Links

About Us

Kirkmont Presbyterian Pre-School was established in 1966, and is conveniently located in Beavercreek, Ohio, at the intersection of North Fairfield and Shakertown Roads on the campus of Kirkmont Presbyterian Church .  The staff stands ready to serve you and your children.  We welcome your questions and input.

Contacting Us

The Pre-School office phone number is 426-5476. We encourage parents to communicate with us about their questions and concerns, or merely to touch base or chat.   The pre-school office also has books and resources on a variety of subjects, and these are always available for loan or reference.

The Pre-School Office

Our office is small and busy, but parents are always welcome.  For more private communication, we can usually find a separate area for discussion, or we can be reached by telephone. When calling, we ask that you be patient; it sometimes takes us several minutes to reach the phone.  An answering machine will take messages when we cannot be reached in person, and the e-mail addresses listed below will always reach us. As parents enroll their children into the program, we provide them with additional phone numbers for after-hours communication with teachers and the pre-school administrator. 

E-mail Addresses

To report an illness: For illnesses that should be reported to other parents in your child's class. 

To ask an urgent question: For questions that require an answer within the current school day, this e-mail address is checked at 9:30 a.m. and periodically throughout the day until closing at 3:30.  Truly urgent inquiries will be answered immediately. 

To report an absence: Report an absence for a reason other than urgent illness. 

For registration inquiries:  Contact us for additional information about signing up your child at Kirkmont. 

During their pre-school years, we strive to help children achieve milestones in personal and social development; gross motor skills; fine motor and perceptual skills; and cognitive and language skills. Each child will also have the opportunity to learn of God's love. Working in close cooperation with parents, we help children to become more independent and to learn to meet their own needs.  We help them to take the beginning steps toward self-discipline and self-responsibility, and we take pride in watching them start to make their own choices and live with the results of those choices.  Teachers and staff provide an atmosphere of love and support while children become aware of other children.  In the group situation, children learn to think and problem solve, verbalizing their feelings and ideas to others, and learn to listen as others verbalize their own feelings in return.

Responsibility, freedom, and creativity for each and every person at Kirkmont is given high priority.  We make every effort to ensure that each child has a joyful experience in an atmosphere of love, support, encouragement, and acknowledgment.  We want children to have good feelings about themselves and their classmates, and to have good feelings about school and their teachers.

The early years of a child's life are a time of rapid growth and development, and we take pride and joy in being a part of this experience.  We encourage parents to look upon us as active partners in making pre-school a positive and wonderful opportunity for learning.

Each member of the staff is important to the whole.  Our staff turn-over is low, but each prospective member fills out an application and is interviewed personally by the Board that governs the pre-school. The board of Kirkmont Pre-School is a sub-committee of the elected session of the Kirkmont Presbyterian Church and directly responsible to the elders and congregation of the church for maintaining a Christian atmosphere.

Each staff person is an active member of a Christian Church. They exemplify the Christian Life in daily practice. They are trained extensively in Early Childhood Education, and share a wealth of practical experience.

We ask parents to read and comply with our policies.  The above hyperlinks lead to the full text of each policy on individual pages. 

By Age:

CURRICULUM

All teachers cover the same concepts, but decide individually what is best for their group and the individual children within their group. Teachers write their own lesson plans.  Groups do not necessarily do the same thing at the same time, nor in the same way. This allows the teachers and children in each group to do what is most important in the most creative way.

Teacher's lesson plans are posted outside the classrooms each month.   All classes are developmental readiness programs.

SAMPLE DAILY SCHEDULES

Active and quiet type activities are alternated throughout daily programs.   There are many opportunities for parent involvement and we encourage parents to contact the teachers or staff for more information on ways in which they make the most of their child's pre-school experience.

Each activity in our curriculum is designed to enhance the pre-school experience for our students and to help them in their development.   Play is so hard to explain and yet, because it is how children learn, it is so important!

Any "curriculum" for pre-schoolers needs to be introduced through the medium of play so that children can explore at their own level.  PLAY

There is no right or wrong way to play; play just is.  In general, it happens without any strictly utilitarian purpose and without coercion. Our professional staff can extend the play without taking over and keep it productive without over-controlling or being judgmental.

Young children are obliged to play.  It is not simply a pleasant pastime, but largely their major reason for living.  Children play, not to avoid reality, but to encounter it.   Play is the way in which children express themselves and the avenue through which they explore, experience, and interpret the world around them.  They do not play to avoid learning, but rather to engage wholeheartedly in the learning process.

Young children approach things on a sensory-motor level.  They need contact with real objects --  to see, feel, hear, taste and smell those objects over and over again before they can get to know all that they want to know about them.  

That isn't really so hard to understand.    After all, learning is a lifetime process.   No matter how old we are, most of us are still learning too.  Why should our children be any different?

There are many, many kinds of learning experiences.  Children learn by repetition, discovering something new each time that they repeat an activity hands-on.   Pre-school can provide them with opportunities for exploration and learning.   A good pre-school program will place heavy stress on play as an instructional device, adapting curriculum to a child's needs as revealed through play.  That is what we strive to do.

Emergencies, for the purpose of school closing, can  include severe weather conditions of any kind as well as problems with the school building.   Where it may be unsafe for children to remain in the building, or to travel to and from school, we consider closing the school for that day or that session.

If circumstances were to warrant evacuating the building or parking area for any reason, the staff would walk children through the back of the property to a residence on Rustic Trail.   If police and/or fire personnel were not already on the scene, we would notify the appropriate department, and then coordinate with the command personnel on the scene to direct parents how and where children should be picked up. UNSCHEDULED SCHOOL CLOSINGS

For the latest information on school closings, parents can check the local stations, television channels 7, 2, and 22; or radio station WHIO (1290) A.M.  These are updated through the day during emergency and severe weather situations. 

Snow days are difficult to call no matter when they occur. Even if the school remains open, we encourage parents to remember that they themselves must consider the particular driving conditions that they will face when traveling with their child, and make their own decisions  about school attendance during weather emergencies.

FIRE AND WEATHER ALERTS

We do everything in our power to protect the children in all safety matters.  We practice fire drills every month, varying both the time of day and the day on which the drill occurs; and we practice weather alert drills during the tornado season.  Records are kept concerning all drills; these are available upon request.

In preparing for emergency procedures, we aim to have children respond immediately to emergency instructions, follow in an orderly safe manner, and feel comfortable and confident.  We monitor a weather alert radio which notifies us when to evacuate or move to a prescribed safe area.

Fire and weather alert procedures are posted in each room of the school building.  Fire procedures are designated in red, and weather alert procedures are designated in green.