Chapel
School chapel is held once a week, see the Chapel Schedule posted in every classroom. Chapel alternates between Mondays and Tuesdays at 9:40 a.m. Children are encouraged to wear their school t-shirts on their scheduled chapel days. Our Chapel Time consists of Bible Stories, songs, honoring those with a birthday, Chapel offering, and lots of praise and fellowship!
An offering is taken during chapel. We choose a ministry to support every year. We provide offering envelopes at the beginning of the school year to help teach your child about giving.
Join us online at our weekly Chapel Time via Facebook LIVE! (Currently, Chapel is held every Tuesday at 9:40am.) Visit our official Facebook Page!
Enrichment
What enrichment opportunities does COL offer?
Music
Every child receives a half hour of Music class every week. This program is included in the tuition. Learn more about our music teacher, Mrs. Devine, on our staff biographies page HERE.
Language Arts Program
Circle of Love utilizes two comprehensive language arts programs:
-- Zoo-phonics (Beginners, Intermediate, Pre-K, & TK)
-- Handwriting Without Tears (Pre-K)
More About Zoo-phonics:
Reading and writing are difficult tasks to master because they require an understanding of abstract methods and concepts. Zoo-phonics uses pictorial mnemonics (animal letters) and body movements (kinesthetic mnemonic) to teach through games and activities! It is an inclusive, multi-sensory program that teaches phonemic awareness in a playful, stress-free way that introduces pre-writing and pre-reading skills! With Zoo-phonics, children learn phonemic awareness, the alphabet, and how to decode (read) and eventually to encode (spell/write). At Circle of Love, each age group interacts with Zoo-phonics a little differently. For example, our Beginners class works with the program in a developmentally appropriate way for that age group whereas our Pre-K or TK classes would work with the program based on the the development of their age group(s).
The "Essences" of Zoo-phonics:
1) The Animal Alphabet helps children remember the shapes and sounds of the letters.
2) Letter sounds are taught before letter names.
3) Lowercase letters are taught before capital letters.
4) The body movement for each Animal Letter helps to cement the phonemic information into memory (connecting sounds to letter shapes).
5) The alphabet is taught sequentially, and as a whole entity, "a - z." The alphabet is not fragmented.
6) Short vowels are taught before long vowels.
7) Phonemic patterns (at, bat, fat, sat, etc.) are taught first rather than random word lists (of, it, then, was, etc.)
8) The Zoo-phonics curriculum is fully integrated with other subjects. (i.e. math, science, art, etc.)
More About Handwriting Without Tears:
Handwriting Without Tears is a writing readiness program that adapts to the needs of each child, meeting them where they are and supporting the areas which may need more development. Handwriting Without Tears understands that learning needs to be joyful, child-friendly, and active! This program prepares young learners for school with developmentally appropriate teaching methods/techniques , child-friendly language, and a hands-on approach that enable children of different abilities to achieve.
At Circle of Love, we utilize intentionally chosen elements from the Handwriting Without Tears Program modified for our play-based program.