Kinderforest

Kinderforest is a Pre-K+ program for five year old children (turning six) at The Mayapple School in Blacksburg, Virginia, with a focus on first grade readiness (or Kindergarten readiness, for children on the cusp of age cut-offs) through a lens of nature education and exploration. Currently, this program is integrated into our multi-age classroom for children ages 3 - 6 and utilizes focus activities and lessons for the Kinderforest cohort. 

About Kinderforest

  • ✺ Full Week Enrollment✺

    Full or extended day attendance 5 days a week covers a complete progression of skills and skill review, readying students for the next academic level.

  • ✺ Part Week Enrollment✺

    Full or extended day attendance 2, 3, or 4 days per week allows families to supplement their home school experience. Families have access to The Mayapple School’s planned topic coverage through general pacing guides, but cover missed topics or other topics and review with their own lessons and materials. Families are expected to attend to their child’s individualized progression and conference periodically with teachers to ensure leveling alignment.

  • ✺ Screen-Free Education✺

    Young children deserve to learn reading, writing, mathematics, and more with materials that they manipulate directly. Although we’ll occassionally use technology to support our learning (for example, viewing pictures we took on a field trip to help fuel classroom discussion or personal writing), screens never replace people at The Mayapple School. We support your child’s motor development, executive functioning, mental health, and right to be a child.

  • ✺ Individualized Progression✺

    Whether students are just learning to associate letters with their sounds or already working on irregular vowel combinations, all students deserve to experience progressive challenge. Individualized progression within our multi-age classroom helps children gain confidence, maintain an intrinsic love of learning, and celebrates differences.

Skill Development

Mathematics

Children build mathematical proficiency through all 5 strands: conceptual understanding; procedural fluency; strategic competence; adaptive reasoning; and productive disposition. As children learn about various topics within their progressive mathematical journey, they build their abilities so that all facets of math, including how and when to apply skills, becomes available to them. Hands-on materials allow for concrete understandings to develop. Learn more about building mathematical proficiency.

Topics and associated skills that are built in the Kinderforest Program include number and number sense, especially from 0 - 100; understanding numerical relationships, such as within subtraction and addition problems and even/odd numbers as well as comparing numbers; understanding the calendar and telling time; measuring weight and length; collecting and displaying data, such as through graphs and tally marks; using money; and making and extending patterns. Learn more about Virginia’s Standards of Learning in Mathematics.

Language and Literacy

The Kinderforest year acts as a key which students use to unlock new ways of communication and enter fully into the amazing journey of learning to read and write. This key feels like magic, but really, it’s science. Instruction at The Mayapple School utilizes a systemic, research-based progression of phonics-based instruction that includes hands-on materials and a focus on reading and writing for meaning. Learn more about the research.

Topics and associated skills developed in the Kinderforest program include mapping phonemes and graphemes (letters and letter sounds); blending and segmenting words; sight words; decodable text patterns; building vocabulary and comprehension skills using fiction and non-fiction texts; story elements; and foundations and conventions of grammar and writing. Learn more about Virginia’s Standards of Learning in English.

Integrated Learning

Kinderforest students participate in a full curriculum that includes nature explorations, science and social study projects based on class interest, and plenty of time to play.

Children in this next stage of unlocking keys of mathematical and language communication need opportunities to tie their developing skills into activities of personal and group interest. Kinderforesters collect data and write about topics of interest, play skill-building games with each other, and set learning goals.

Encouraging each child’s interests and choice-making maintains your child’s intrinsic love of learning. Incorporating mini lessons and related practice each day builds student skills and abilities to meet academic challenges.