Kindergarten

Nursery - K3

At BCCI, it is our mission to provide each child with a holistic, nurturing, and inspiring learning environment. In Kindergarten, students experience various activities and lifelong learning experiences, providing them with opportunities to develop a God-centered mission, the right character, academic excellence and serve others by being socially, emotionally, spiritually, academically and physically skilled. The BCCI Kindergarten level adopted the US Common Core curriculum through a God-centered integrated approach.

Our Kindergarten program focuses on the students’ happiness, creativity and innovation, problem-solving and critical thinking, collaboration, social skills, and self-help skills. Only when students feel safe and trusting in a conducive environment will they truly be open to exploring and diving into learning new things.

ENGAGING LIFELONG EXPERIENTIAL ACTIVITIES

Experiential learning is an educational approach that emphasizes personal or practical experience in the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes. Students are encouraged to develop a passion for learning and a thirst for knowledge by engaging in authentic experiences that allow them to learn what they need to know.

Throughout the school year, students have the opportunity to engage in a number of activities. These include the following:

CIRCLE TIME - serves as a time to connect with our students, communicate, sing worship songs, play games, and practice social-emotional skills, fine motor skills, as well as hand-eye coordination through body movements.
REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCES - students engage in hands-on learning, collaboration, and creativity, integrating real-world phenomena into their educational experience.
HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES - an instructional technique that allows students to learn by doing. During hands-on activity students are directly involved in their learning. They get direct practical experiences as they apply their learning and learn from their experiences.
INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING - encourages students to think critically, ask questions, investigate, and explore new ideas. This approach helps students develop higher-order thinking, problem-solving, and scientific attitude.
PROJECT-LEARNING APPROACH - students are able to experience in-depth studies of real-world topics based on their interests. Projects have a compound yet flexible framework within which teaching and learning are seen as interactive processes.
TRUE-TO-LIFE EXPERIENCES - are practical or actual experiences of students, as opposed to the abstract, theoretical, or idealized sphere of the classroom, laboratory, or any designated learning areas. These experiences enable students to apply the skills they’ve acquired from textbooks, gaining a genuine understanding of the task at hand.
LIFE SKILLS - are essentially the abilities that help promote mental well-being and competence in young learners as they encounter life’s challenges. Life skills are generally applied in health and social contexts, encompassing aspects such as self-awareness, empathy, creative thinking, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, stress management, emotional regulation, effective communication, and fostering healthy interpersonal relationships.
STORY TIME - develops and encourages skills like language and literacy, as well as the cognitive development and social-emotional growth of students at their early years. It also develops creative imagination, expression and descriptive writing skills.
SHOW AND TELL - a school activity which involves a student bringing an object, project, or item of interest and presenting it to the whole class. During this activity, the student describes the item and shares relevant information or stories about it. This learning style develops a student's self-confidence, public speaking skills, and ability to communicate effectively.
TPR (TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE) - is a language learning method that prioritizes body movement and language acquisition. Incorporating physical activities such as moving the body, singing, and dancing all work very well in this method as it helps the learner solidify the connection between actions and their meanings in their minds. As a result, this method develops the students’ language proficiency and vocabulary skills.
TRILINGUAL LANGUAGE LEARNING - is able to enhance problem-solving skills, improved critical thinking abilities and increased creativity and greater mental flexibility.
ARTS AND CRAFTS INTEGRATING GOD'S CREATION - helps students to be open and attentive to finding God in all things. By engaging imaginative prayer and creative expression, it brings out the best of our students more deeply into their hearts and minds, their daily life rendezvous with God.
BIBLE TIME - brings the Bible alive to students and teaches them how to apply its lessons to their lives and the world around them. Students gain a deeper understanding of the Bible by reading Bible stories, singing praise songs, dramas, and applying Biblical lessons through role-play and discussion.
CORNERS PLAY TIME/PURPOSEFUL ACTIVE PLAY - helps develop student's creativity, sharpen their focus, and increase their motivation to read and learn, solve problems and be socially involved with their classmates.
BODILY-KINESTHETIC - is an intelligence that enhances students' capacity to manipulate objects and use a variety of physical skills. This intelligence also involves a sense of timing and the perfection of skills through mind–body union. Athletes, dancers, surgeons, and craftspeople exhibit well-developed bodily kinesthetic intelligence, and here in BCCI we inculcate these skills at early years of development.
INDOOR AND OUTDOOR NATURE WALK - gives students an opportunity to relax with a purpose, take time to think, observe, and explore the environment. It is also a great way to disengage, discover, and explore nature while enjoying the outdoors. These are endless possibilities to connect our students with real-world phenomena by creating worthy activities and memories with God’s perfect nature.
MIND MAPPING - instigates students to organize information visually into a hierarchy, showing relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words, and parts of words are added.
THEMED ACTIVITIES - is popular and widely adopted in many preschool classrooms. This method of teaching and learning benefits children in multiple ways, e.g., Interesting Themes, Encourage a Love of Learning, Children Make Deeper Connections, Children Learn About the World, Learning Becomes Meaningful, Theme-based Learning Supports Different Learning Needs.
STEAM/STEM PROJECTS - STEAM is an educational approach that incorporates the arts into the more-familiar STEM model, which includes science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It includes any of the visual or performing arts, such as dance, design, painting, photography and writing. This approach develops students' holistic growth across five learning areas

CHAPEL

A weekly chapel program (Wednesday mornings from 8:00 to 8:30). Our Kindergarteners feel God’s presence through listening to the Biblical Words of God during Chapel Day. Our young learners develop a love of praying, reading the Bible, and following positive examples from a given theme. These Chapel Time experiences change the way they believe in God and touch their lives religiously and spiritually.

FIELD TRIPS

Play a significant role in a student’s learning process. Doing a meaningful field trip helps spark student’s passion or curiosity. This will push students to take learning into their own hands and build a habit to do it more and heighten their motivation in learning the world around us. Usually by grade and related to specific areas of study. Students learn through visiting and experiencing an environment, activity, or workplace. Followed by a discussion on what interested them and how they might apply that to what they are learning in class.

RECESS

Play is a vital component of a child’s development, and as such, each grade level has two recess periods into the daily schedule. Recesses take place either in our covered area or in the outdoor play area. In the event of excessively hot weather or highly polluted air, the students use our kinesthetic playroom for indoor play.

NAP TIME (NURSERY TO KINDERGARTEN 2)

Nap time is an important part of their daily routine, providing an opportunity for rest and rejuvenation with their busy day of learning and play. This is designed to help the students wind down from their energetic activities and prepare for a period of peaceful rest.

ACADEMIC PROGRAM

The Kindergarten team firmly believes that each child can experience success. Teachers and support staff are dedicated to displaying the best potential in each student. We have specific and measurable benchmarks at each grade level, but our emphasis is nurturing the unique developmental growth of our early learners. We want them to master concepts fully and reach grade-level benchmarks yet, we are aware that all children develop in their own time and through varied pathways, all beyond the guidance of God’s grace.

CURRICULUM

A Biblically-Integrated U.S. Common Core Curriculum
At BCCI, we provide an international curriculum encompassing a wide range of subjects while integrating biblical principles into the learning experience based on US Common Core standards. Our aim is to equip our students with the necessary tools and knowledge to excel in high school, lay a solid foundation for studying at international universities and career preparedness, and make a meaningful impact on the world as a Christ-centered institution.

The primary language of instruction is English. Additionally, students learn Thai and Chinese, becoming fluent in both languages.

KINDERGARTEN CLASS DETAILS

Maximum Class Size: Nursery (10), Kindergarten 1-2 (15), K3 (18)

CORE CURRICULUM

As one of the growing schools in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region, our curriculum is centered on our students and their developmental needs. We transitionally adopted the U.S. curriculum for kindergarten students as it involves a multitude of learning experiences that are grounded on a meaningful understanding of early childhood development. These practical experiences are established daily within an integrated process curriculum that follows core curriculum standards for Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and US NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards).

Our Kindergarten students are prepared with the foundation in literacy skills such as phonological awareness, beginning writing, and numeracy skills to transition smoothly into the primary school program. Through classes that provide age-appropriate learning experiences. We focus on shaping your child’s future holistically, are able to think positively and critically, feel and value the importance of life the people around, and can do things independently with confidence and to follow and obey God.

ASSESSMENTS

Assessments in Nursery to Kindergarten 3 Levels are based on a checklist. It is a checklist for developmental milestones covering each child’s different learning areas and skills, which show that they attain the adopted curriculum standards.

Each level of assessment is described as follows:

EX – Extending – The student develops an understanding beyond the expected concepts and competencies in relation to the expected learning.

P – Proficient – The student develops a complete understanding of the concepts and competencies in relation to the expected learning.

A – Approaching – The student develops an approaching understanding of the concepts and competencies in relation to the expected learning.

D – Developing – The student develops a limited understanding of the concepts and competencies in relation to the expected learning.

EM – Emerging – The student develops an initial understanding of the concepts and competencies in relation to the expected learning.

Furthermore, we have the student’s behavioral and personal growth and work habits assessments, which follow the legend mentioned below.

C – Consistent – Personal growth and work habits are consistently applied during the duration of the term/academic year.

P- Progressing – Personal growth and work habits are progressing in manner during the duration of the term/academic year

I – Inconsistent – Personal growth and work habits are inconsistently maintained during the term/academic year.

Every middle and final term, we also assess students’ progress by writing progress reports across learning areas. These reports are diligently shared with the parents during the Parent-Teacher Conference during the final term and sent home during midterm.