Nurturing Confidence and a Love of Learning
From the first moment your child enters a classroom at Rancho Solano, they are immersed in an early learning program that sets the course for their successful academic careers and life skills.
As one of the best private preschools and kindergartens in Arizona, Rancho Solano’s commitment to academic excellence starts with the youngest of students. A play-oriented environment that supports Guided Play and Dramatic Play is the foundation of our Early Learning Center.
Our talented teachers will help your child gain confidence within a vibrant community that promotes growth, encourages a love of learning, and provides a safe atmosphere where appropriate risks can be explored.
Our classrooms are carefully designed to be a supportive learning environment with quality curriculum, assessment, instruction, and attentive classroom leadership and management. Classroom iPads are used to explore new ideas, strengthen, and challenge skills in all academic areas.
Students here feel safe, loved, engaged, and inspired. You will feel the same way when you visit our campus because we take a holistic approach toward creating the best possible environment for academic success and personal growth
Rancho Solano’s exceptional Early Learning Program curriculum incorporates world language, math, science, fine arts and technology, and promotes social, emotional, intellectual and physical development in a nurturing, enriching learning environment.
If you would like to learn more about becoming part of the Rancho Solano Preparatory School family, please request more information or see our overview of the admissions process.
Pre-K Curriculum
As students develop listening, visual and motor skills, their vocabularies and understanding of word concepts grow. Immersion in a print-rich environment helps students learn to recognize and form letters. Teachers work on development of oral language and phonemic awareness, using literature, songs, rhymes and games. As active participants in learning, students have many opportunities to express themselves to their classmates and teachers.
Students improve their logical reasoning skills as they play. So we give them opportunties to interact with their environment and manipulate materials. We introduce them to number recognition, solving basic word problems, recognizing patterns, identifying shapes and their attributes and ordering numbers.
During visits to the computer lab students learn to recognize keyboard letters and work on fine motor skills. We teach them to manuever the keyboard and mouse through age-appropriate learning modules.
Spanish instruction begins with our two-year old students throughout the week. Students learn key phrases in their new language through simple, repeated songs and chants. As they learn basic vocabulary, our preschool students share the joy of learning a second language.
Our early learning Music program incorporates a “hands-on” and “minds-on” approach by combining elements from the Suzuki Violin method with the Orff Methods. This unique combination and approach aids students in learning to read, feel, and internalize music; making new cognitive connections with every class.
Visual Arts in early learning stimulate creativity and encourage students to establish connections between art and other disciplines, such as history and world cultures. Students also investigate the relationship between colors, shapes, and lines through hands-on, age-appropriate activities. Our instructors use a variety of materials and techniques to expose students to the many possibilities that exist within visual arts.
Movement classes focus on gross motor skills to strengthen the large muscle groups of the body. They also increase coordination through movement activities and games. A non-competitive environment helps students feel safe to try new skills.
Capitalizing on our early learning students’ natural curiosity of the world, they are engaged in a hands-on approach in various activities. Our teachers focus on supporting students in their development of observation skills, problem solving skills, and helping them to understand that questioning is a part of the learning process. Developmentally appropriate science is also included in this curricular area.
Emphasis on character development begins as soon as students set foot on a Rancho Solano campus. Our students learn to be productive citizens of the world. We incorporate the Rancho Five – Respectful, Responsible, Polite, Considerate, Successful – into a curriculum that transitions outside the walls of the classroom.
Kindergarten Curriculum
Our accelerated Kindergarten Program continues work on the building blocks of language arts. We use explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and sound-spelling correspondence.
- Phonemic awareness (oral blending, segmentation, rhyming)
- Comprehension strategies
- Vocabulary building
- Grammar (parts of speech, sentences, usage, mechanics)
- Spelling
- Print/book awareness
By the beginning of Kindergarten, most children can read and comprehend any book or story suitable to their individual abilities.
- Exposes students to different types of writing (poems, autobiographies, letters and stories)
- Teaches them to apply learned vocabulary to their work
- Introduces techniques for editing (peer, individual, teacher)
Designed to relate to students’ interests, the curriculum teaches them to define and solve problems. This develops invaluable reasoning skills. Students learn that mathematics has its own language and build their mathematics vocabulary.
The math curriculum exposes students to:
- Number writing
- Word problems
- Ordinal positioning
- Counting/adding money
- Fractions (introduction)
- Learning techniques
- Strategies for problem solving, measurement and adding double digit numbers without regrouping.
Using a theme-based approach, the social studies program explores topics that are meaningful to students of this age. Students begin understand the smallest parts of the world around them and how best to negotiate these parts. This increases their understanding as their world expands.
Students learn the basics of keyboarding and simple word processing. We use fun, challenging computer-based projects to enhance the classroom curriculum.
Students become proficient with word processing, spreadsheets, presentation and graphics software. Additionally, teachers use Internet-based projects to reinforce skills and bring a new dimension to the learning process. Every classroom has one or more computers for student use, in addition to our computer labs.
Fun and play form the foundation for our kindergarten Spanish classes. Students learn key phrases in their new language through simple, repeated songs and chants. They become familiar with more complex aspects of the language through a variety of multisensory activities.
Our Early Learning and Kindergarten Music program incorporates a “hands-on” and “minds-on” approach by combining elements from the Suzuki Violin method with the Orff Methods. This unique combination and approach aids students in learning to read, feel, and internalize music; making new cognitive connections with every class.
Visual Arts in Early Learning and Kindergarten stimulate creativity and encourage students to establish connections between art and other disciplines, such as history and world cultures. Students also investigate the relationship between colors, shapes, and lines through hands-on, age-appropriate activities. Our instructors use a variety of materials and techniques to expose students to the many possibilities that exist within visual arts.
Physical Education classes focus on gross motor skills to strengthen the large muscle groups of the body. They also increase coordination through movement activities and games. A non-competitive environment helps students feel safe to try new skills.
Emphasis on character development begins as soon as students set foot on a Rancho Solano campus. Our students learn to be productive citizens of the world. We incorporate the Rancho Five – Respectful, Responsible, Polite, Considerate, Successful – into a curriculum that transitions outside the walls of the classroom.