Kindergarten

Religion

The kindergarten religion curriculum concentrates on proclaiming the goodness of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We encourage prayer and a personal relationship with Christ, as well as the nurturing of faith, hope, and love in all students. The children are encouraged to relate God’s message to real-life experiences. The rich traditions and doctrine of the Catholic faith are presented. 

Text: Loyola Press, Christ Our Life, 2009

Social Studies

The social studies curriculum integrates weekly themes into the children’s awareness of the world, emphasizing people and cultures. The kindergarteners learn about themselves and their families, and how they relate to home, neighborhood, and school environments. Special emphasis is on holidays and the joy of celebrating all people.

Text: Teacher-generated materials

Language Arts 

The Journeys reading program incorporates daily routines for kindergarteners. These routines include a rich variety of activities in phonics, writing, oral language, critical thinking, and comprehension. Instruction is based on a “theme of the week,” sight words, and phonetic sounds. Verbal expression and interpersonal interactions are highly encouraged throughout each day.

Text: Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt 2013

Phonics

Letterland is a systematic phonics instruction program that uses multi-sensory activities to teach letter and sound recognition.  Letterland is used to complement our Journeys phonics reading program by providing resources for teaching the alphabet, phonics and word building.


Text: Letterland International Ltd, Letterland Kindergarten, 2011

Handwriting

A Reason For Handwriting provides an integrated approach using Scripture, art and handwriting to teach letter formation.  The curriculum is organized to give several options to help meet individuals needs when forming manuscript letters.


Text: The Concerned Group, Inc., A Reason For Handwriting, 2011 

Science 

The kindergarten science curriculum provides many opportunities for children to develop and maintain the essential skills that form the basis for lifelong learning. The science process skills are important inquiry tools and are essential for investigating our natural world. These skills include observation, comparison, classification, communication, experimentation, and the gathering/recording of data. The program strongly incorporates reading, writing, and math skills.

Text: Thematic Units 

Math 

Sadlier-Oxford Math is a hands-on, success-oriented program which enables kindergarteners to develop a solid foundation in the language and basic concepts of all areas of mathematics. New learning is presented in increments with time provided between increments for practice. Math concepts include patterns, counting, numeral recognition and writing, graphing, identifying shapes, one-to-one correspondence, story problems, time, and money.

Text: Sadlier-Oxford, Progress in Mathematics Grade K, 2006

First Grade

Religion

In religion we focus on basic Catholic prayers, introduction to the liturgical seasons, God our Father’s role in our family and community, the parts of the mass, and Mary our Blessed Mother. We incorporate scriptures from our Bibles into weekly lessons. Each first grade class sponsors a child through the parish’s Children of God Program.

Text: Loyola University Press, Christ Our Life School Edition, 2011 
         The Eager Reader Bible, Catholic Edition, 2008 

Social Studies 

The social studies program often dovetails with our religion program. The children explore their family, neighborhood, and community. They also compare these environments with their sponsored child’s culture (with help from the Spanish teacher). The children examine careers with the help of parent presentations and discussions. They explore the role careers play in society. They develop skills with maps, globes, charts, and graphs.

Text: MacMillan/McGraw Hill, People and Places, 2005 

Reading

The reading program is a literature based reading program which develops comprehension strategies with site vocabulary and dovetails with our phonetical study of long and short vowels. It incorporates a basic introduction to parts of speech, plot and setting, and journal writing. The series uses stories from well known authors.

Text: Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt 2013 

Phonics/Spelling  

These programs teach children to use blends, diagraphs, long and short vowels, word families, and context clues to decode and correctly use words in everyday reading and writing. The children practice these skills in story and scientific writing.
Text:  Modern Curriculum Press, Phonics, 2008
Text: Houghton Mifflin, Spelling and Vocabulary, 2006

Handwriting

The handwriting program is based on scripture verses and Bible characters. The children learn the correct formation of upper and lower case letters of basic manuscript. In addition, the children explore and express their handwriting skills in the creation of four student created books.
Text: The Concerned Group, Inc., A Reason for Handwriting, 2004 

Science

The science program introduces plant life, insects, life cycles, water cycle, habitats, solar system, simple machines, and forces. The first graders are responsible for experimentation, data collections, illustrations, project reporting, and journal writings. They are also responsible for the planting and basic upkeep of the school’s first grade butterfly gardens. These projects and activities provide ample opportunity for parent involvement and environmental awareness.

Text:  Scott Foresmen, Science, 2010 

Math

The math program introduces simple geometry, basic math facts through 10, time, money, problem solving, fact families, measuring and graphing. This is a hands on manipulative based study of mathematics which engage the children’s varying learning styles. The children learn to use and manipulate coins and math facts in a classroom grocery store.

Text: Sadlier-Oxford, Math In Progress, 2006

Second Grade

Religion 

Second grade religion prepares the children for the reception of Reconciliation and Eucharist. The leaner will review their Baptism and the fact that they are members of God’s family, the Church. The students explore God’s commandments. The children discover the power of God’s love through His forgiveness. The children also study the mass so that they have a better understanding of the greatest prayer of our church. The children grow in an appreciation of the gift of Jesus of himself in the Eucharist.

Text: Loyola Press, Christ Our Life, 2016 

Social Studies 

In second grade the focus is on community. The children  understand the importance of family life. They also develop as good citizens in the classroom, school, community, and world. Second graders will understand the importance of government in providing services to the community. They also become aware that things change over time and that all people are important to a community. The students appreciate that geography has an important role in people’s lives. They finally discover the importance of environment and their role in maintaining it.

Text: Macmillan McGraw Hill, We Live Together,  2005 

Language Arts 

In second grade the children learn to recognize complete sentences. The children also learn to identify the types of sentences and what punctuation is needed. The children also learn to identify nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and how they are used in a sentence. The emphasis is using these skills to write paragraphs, letters, and reports.

Text: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Journeys, 2012 

Reading

Second graders grow in their new ability to read. They develop their ability to comprehend and to make predictions in their reading. The learners work on their ability to decode unknown words and develop their reading vocabulary. The children will be able to find the main idea in a selection and summarize what they have read. The children are also introduced to examples of children’s literature.

Text: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Journeys, 2012
 

Phonics 

The children will review the sounds of consonants and short and long vowel sounds. The children will use suffixes, prefixes, and hard and soft “c” and “g”. They will discover the sounds of blends, digraphs and “r “controlled vowels. They will also use contractions, synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. These skills will be integrated into their reading.

Text: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Journeys, 2012

Spelling 

The children are introduced to a new word list each week. These words follow a rule of phonics, for example short vowel sounds or  "r“ controlled vowels. The spelling is checked in a weekly test, but these words are also used to improve the child’s reading and writing skills. There is emphasis placed on proofreading their writing. The children are encouraged to use dictionaries and the thesaurus.

Text: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Journeys, 2012 

Handwriting 

The children review the correct method of writing manuscript letters and numbers. The students are introduced to cursive writing. Emphasis is placed on legibility and self-evaluation.

Text: Zaner-Bloser, Handwriting, 2012 

Science 

The children will discover how living things grow and change. They will learn about the habitat of various living things. They will discover how weather affects the environment. 

The students explore rocks and soil and show how fossils teach us of our past. They learn about our solar system and how seasons change. The children learn about the three forms of matter. They discover about magnets and motion. These facts will also be studied as gifts of our creator.

Text: Scott Foresman, Science, 2010

Math

Second graders will review addition and subtraction facts. They will work on understanding place value to 1000. They will learn to show information with graphs. The students will learn two and three digit addition and subtraction. The children will learn various themes in Geometry and measurement. The students will have practice with money and time. The children will be introduced to the use of fractions, multiplication and division.

Text: Sadlier-Oxford, Progress in Mathematics, 2012