At Mary Immaculate Preschool, we believe “Playing is learning!” Mary Immaculate Preschool is a full day early childhood education program for children from 18 months to 5 years of age. Our children learn through teacher-directed as well as self-initiated activities and play centers. The various activities and play centers support areas of early literacy, early math, fine and gross motor skills, social and emotional development, as well as self-help skills.
In addition, formal religious education is part of our curriculum. Our children make weekly visits to the chapel to learn the importance of prayer and to our school atrium for lessons from the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program. In chapel, our children learn their basic prayers and become aware of God’s presence. In the atrium, children encounter and deepen their relationship with God by working with the materials within the atrium that helps them grow in their faith. Learning about liturgical seasons and the parables of the Kingdom of God are just some examples of our faith formation for the young child in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program.
In addition to religious education, early literacy is also emphasized through the Hand Writing Without Tears program which emphasizes writing by hand to improve the child’s creative writing and fine motor skills. This innovative program takes the child’s various learning styles into account and comprises tools and strategies that make hand writing fun and easy for our children.
We have a great appreciation and Love of Culture at our school. Preparing our students for the multilingual, multicultural world and helping them to learn the importance and value in respecting other cultures is important. We immerse our students in enriching, fun-filled, culturally diverse activities, especially those related to Vietnamese tradition. Some highlights of the year include: Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival, Tet or Lunar New Year Festival, Thanksgiving celebration, a Christmas Pageant, All Saints day, Easter Egg hunt and Cinco de Mayo. In addition, our Pre-K children are also given the opportunity to have weekly lessons in the Vietnamese language, culture and customs as well as basic conversation skills.