Building Blocks PreSchool

Our mission is to provide a foundation towards kindergarten readiness.

Explore, Get Set, and Go!

The Building Blocks Program utilizes the HighScope Curriculum as the foundation. HighScope is a DESE-approved early childhood curriculum. High Scope students will:

1. Become independent, responsible, and confident-ready for success in school.
2. Learn to plan many of their own activities, carry them out, and talk with other children and their teacher about what they have done.
3. Learn through active involvement with people, materials, events, and ideas.
4. Gain knowledge and skills in important concept areas, such as creative representation, language and literacy, initiative and social relations, movement, music, classification, number, space, and time.

In addition,  all of our classrooms use the Fundations and Heggerty Pre-K curriculum.  Fundations is used to teach letter-sound associations and letter formation.  The Heggerty curriculum uses nursery rhymes to introduce students to language play and phonemic awareness skills.  The focus of these lessons is on exposure, not mastery. 

Overview

The Fundations® Pre-K Activity Set provides an introduction, or “pre-dose”, to the letter sound and writing skills that are taught to mastery in the Fundations Level K program. It is not intended to provide a full pre-k literacy curriculum.

Our Pre-K Activity Set follows the same principles of instruction as all our other programs: explicit, systematic, interactive, and multisensory. Activities offer ample opportunities for students to practice and receive feedback.

Skills

The Fundations® Pre-K Activity Set supports students’ emerging understanding of the alphabetic principles of letter-sound associations and alphabetical order, and the written language skill of manuscript letter formation

• Knowledge of the names and sounds associated with printed letters

• Ability to manipulate the sounds of spoken language

• Ability to rapidly name a sequence of letters, numbers, objects, or colors

• Ability to write isolated letters or one’s own name

• Ability to remember the content of spoken information for a short time

First Semester: The focus during the first semester will be on teaching the alphabetic principle of letter sound correspondence with the whole class Students will practice:

• Recognition of the alphabetical order of letters a-z

• Letter name, keyword, and sound for the 26 letters of the alphabet (letter-sound correspondence)

• Visual connection between the letter name, its sound, and its grapheme (or written representation

Second Semester: Further development of letter-sound correspondence (alphabetic principle) will continue with the whole class, and letter formation skills will be introduced.  Students will practice:

• Letter formation for lowercase letters

• Letter formation for uppercase letter

• Association of a sound with a letter that is written

• Association of a sound with a letter that is written

Overview

Heggerty lessons teach phonological & phonemic awareness skills daily including rhyme, phoneme isolation, blending, segmenting and manipulation.  Students will also practice 2 early literacy skills, including building alphabet knowledge and language awareness. 

The lessons are oral and auditory, allowing students to hear sounds in words, even if they don’t yet know the letters that represent the sound.  Teachers use Heggerty lessons as a warm up to instructions that teach the alphabetic principle.  This allows students to hear the sounds in words and match them to the letters, helping students see the reciprocal relationship between phonemic awareness and phonics. 

• Students will gain an understanding of rhyme by hearing and repeating rhyming word pairs. 

• Students will isolate the initial sound in spoken words with focused consonant sounds. *Students will learn to blend two words into a compound word. 

• Students will isolate the final sound they hear in a spoken word with focused consonant sounds. 

• Students will learn to segment a compound words into two individual words

In a caring and positive atmosphere, we create a warm and happy place for preschoolers to learn. As we bridge the gap from home to school, we guide children to a continued good self-image while building social skills in a school setting. Sensory, motor, perceptual, and language skills are introduced through materials and activities which are both child-centered and teacher-directed. Work is planned which emphasizes the process rather than the product, fostering a sense of accomplishment and pride. The focus of learning is on readiness skills needed in kindergarten. Based on the theory that children learn through play, classroom routines encourage active involvement, meaningful experimentation, and reinforcement through repetition. Schedules are designed which balance structures and free choice, as well as active and quiet times. Recognizing that children grow in predictable stages, we treat each child as an individual, working from the level each child has attained and moving forward one step at a time. We teach a love of learning by allowing children to feel success without pressure.

Building Blocks operates Monday - Friday. Classroom hours vary by building (hours are subject to change to align with building start and ends times should they be adjusted prior to the start of the school year):

 Fox and Rockport Heights - 7:15 am - 3:15 pm

Meramec Heights and Seckman - 8:15 am - 4:15 pm

Building Blocks hours of operation on scheduled early dismissal days:

Fox and Rockport Heights - 7:15am - 12:15 pm

Meramec Heights and Seckman - 8:15 am - 1:15 pm

Registration Fee: A non-refundable registration fee is collected each year in the amount of $50 per child.  ($75 max for family)  

Weekly tuition: Tuition is $180.00 per week.  Payment is due on Friday, prior to the week of service.  If you have more than one child enrolled in Building Blocks, there is a 10% discount off the total tuition (siblings must be living in the same household).

Your payment will be auto-drafted through the Arux portal, using the stored payment method on file. Removing auto-draft or declined payments may result in a disruption of care until the payment issue is rectified. Building Blocks does not accept cash payments for tuition.

The weekly tuition will only be adjusted on weeks with scheduled days off school such as holidays, or school closures due to inclement weather.  Payments will not be prorated for days missed due to illness, planned vacations, or any other absences.

Late Fee: If payment is not made by Tuesday, you will not be allowed to drop off your child and a $10 late fee will be assessed.  Failure to make weekly payments may result in your child's enrollment being terminated. Any questions or concerns regarding weekly tuition may be addressed to the Building Blocks office staff.  

NSF FEE: A $15.00 fee will be assessed on all "insufficient funds" (NSF) checks and charged to the child's account. If we receive 2 NSF checks, it will become necessary for us to request all future payments in the form of a money order or credit card. 

If you need before and after school care (Character Kids Club- CKC) Parents will need to register for that program separately. CKC is available to all Building Blocks families at an additional fee.  More information can be found on the CKC website or on Arux