Nurturing Confidence and a Love of Learning
From the moment your child enters a classroom at Rancho Solano, they are immersed in an early learning program that develops life skills and sets the course for their successful academic careers.
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 Pre-K and Kindergarten curriculum.
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 and playgrounds are carefully designed to be supportive learning spaces with quality curriculum, instruction, assessment, and qualified teachers.
At Rancho Solano, students feel safe, loved, engaged, and inspired. We take a holistic approach toward creating the best possible environment for academic success and personal growth.
Our exceptional Early Learning Program curriculum incorporates language, math, science, fine arts, music, IT/STEM, and physical education, and promotes social, emotional, intellectual, and physical development.
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
The primary focus is giving students the skills and knowledge they need to prepare them to read. 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 the development of oral language and phonemic awareness, using literature, songs, rhymes, and games.
We provide foundational skills to prepare students for a successful math career. Young children improve their logical reasoning skills as they play. We therefore give them playful opportunities 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.
The focus in Social Studies is on character development. Our students learn to be productive citizens of the world. We focus on the Rancho Five: Respectful, Responsible, Considerate, Polite, and Successful. Real-life experiences, picture books, and role-playing are used to demonstrate and teach these behaviors.
We start with our IT/STEM classes in Pre-K 3 where students get hands-on experience learning basic skills such as opening/closing programs, mouse skills, and learning through interactive educational applications.
Spanish instruction begins with our three-year-old students. They learn key phrases and words through simple, repeated songs, stories, and play. As our preschool students grasp fundamental vocabulary, they not only acquire valuable language skills but also cultivate a profound sense of joy and fulfillment in the process of learning a second language.
Our early learning Music program teaches students the fundamentals of music through a variety of activities such as singing, dancing, playing instruments, stories, and listening. Pre-K students participate in a number of performances throughout the school year such as the mini-musical, Spring Show, and holiday parties.
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.
P.E. classes focus on developing gross motor skills and strengthening the large muscle groups of the body. They also improve 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 about the world, we engage them in hands-on activities to develop their observation and problem-solving skills and help them to understand that questioning is a part of the learning process. Developmentally appropriate science is also included in this curricular area.
Kindergarten Curriculum
By the beginning of Kindergarten, most children can read and comprehend any book or story suitable for their age. Our focus is to build on this and continue to improve reading readiness and writing skills by teaching:
- Phonemic awareness (oral blending, segmentation, rhyming)
- Comprehension strategies
- Vocabulary building
- Grammar (parts of speech, sentences, usage, mechanics)
- Spelling
- Print/book awareness
- Different types of writing (poems, autobiographies, letters and stories)
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
We encourage students’ sense of wonder and natural curiosity about the world. They engage in hands-on science activities and learn about different habitats and life cycles. Students learn to make observations and come to understand that science can be seen in everyday activities.
Using a theme-based approach, the social studies program explores topics that are meaningful to students of this age. Students begin to 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, simple word processing and presentation software. We use fun, challenging computer-based projects to enhance the classroom curriculum.
Students also develop skills in robotics and basic coding.
Every classroom has iPads for student use in addition to the computers in the STEM lab.
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 Kindergarten Music program continues to teach students the fundamentals of music through a variety of activities such as singing, dancing, playing instruments, stories, and listening. Kindergarten students participate in a number of performances throughout the school year such as the Winter Show, Spring Show, and holiday parties.
Visual Arts in Kindergarten stimulates creativity and encourages students to establish connections between art and other disciplines, such as history and world cultures. Students 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 improve 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.