St. Austin offers both part-time (Monday through Friday, 7:50am-12:30pm) and full-time (Monday through Friday) options for Pre-Kindergarten three-year-olds. Students must be three years-old as of September 1st to apply for PK3 and four years-old as of September 1st to apply for PK4.
At St. Austin Catholic School, our classrooms provide a place where children learn to make new friends, to share, and to enjoy Christian living in a nurturing environment. Emphasis is placed on the young child’s conceptual learning, attainment of basic skills, and participation in meaningful, relevant learning experiences.
All PK3 and PK4 students enjoy a comprehensive curriculum to help prepare them for their Kindergarten years and beyond. St. Austin’s teachers utilize Frogstreet to provide a joyful approach to learning and integrates instruction across developmental domains and early learning disciplines so children can effectively continue on the path to kindergarten readiness.
Throughout the day, children are self-directed through center-based learning. They receive basic readiness skills such as the alphabet, numbers, shapes, and colors. In addition to coursework in main subject areas, students also participate in PE daily, along with the following electives twice a week: Art, Music, and Spanish. We feel it is crucial for students to learn a foreign language as soon as possible in order to aid in their educational development, and is one of the many reasons our curriculum is truly one-of-a-kind.
Students will enrich their fine motor skills through tracing and writing letters using a variety of tools and activities, develop the ability to form upper and lower case letters using basic print conventions, and begin tracing and writing their first and last name through the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum.
The learning experience of the preschool years provide a foundation which guides the child’s MIND – academically; HEART-emotionally; and SPIRIT-socially. We provide a school environment that encourages the natural desire of a child to learn, yet challenges children to engage in thinking, reasoning, and communicating with others.
We promote an atmosphere of mutual respect and encouragement where children are prepared for their next steps in learning, so that they are happy, confident, creative, sociable and enthusiastic learners. A strong partnership between home and school is created by working closely with parents and community.