Preschool

Here at Summit, teachers and parents form a close partnership and communicate often. Our preschool parents receive weekly written updates detailing classroom activities via our website.

To fully involve parents in their child’s growth, teachers continually record each child’s progress in the online Teaching Strategies database. Parents create passwords that allow them to access teacher observations and easily communicate between home and school.

Formal preschool reports are created twice a year. Student reports include ongoing observations and assessment information, photographs, and comments that form a rich narrative about your child’s progress. All assessments are correlated to the developmental benchmarks based on research related to how young children develop and learn. These reports also provide parents with games and activity ideas that are designed to supplement and reinforce each individual stage of preschool development.

Our dedicated preschool playground feels more like a beautiful park created just for younger children. It serves as an outdoor classroom, where one, two, and three-person bikes travel along a wide, long sidewalk path as children develop their gross motor skills and strengthen social skills such as sharing, taking turns, and communication. A large, grassy area allows children to run, play, and enjoy fresh air on an exhilarating tire jumper.

Children enjoy climbing and sliding on covered playground equipment safely located over rubber mulch. The large sand area is a treat for many children as they build, dig, and sculpt. The park features a large covered patio filled with building materials and multi-sensory activity tables that continually hold new surprises.

Summer camps are another way children enjoy the many wonderful theme-based activities offered at Summit. Each week, our staff plans engaging projects and games that enable learning through meaningful play. Our preschool students who are currently enrolled, or enrolled for the upcoming school year, are invited to join in the fun! Camp typically begins the first week after the school year continues through most of the summer.

Attend one week of camp or enroll in all. Choose between full day: 8:30AM to 3:30 PM, or half-day programs: 8:30am - noon. Summer extended hours can expand the day from 7am to 5:30pm. Camp brochures and dates are on our website.

BEST strengthens our Community by hosting the father-daughter dance, mother-son dance, water day, spirit days, Global Awareness Day and much more. Our parents’ commitment to education and the school is remarkable, strengthening the very fabric of our school.

The Summit School of Ahwatukee art curriculum is based on the Vitruvius Program. This art, architecture and design program enables students to use their creative intelligence to express ideas and concepts in tangible forms. As students engage in work based on real and imagined projects, they deepen critical thinking, narrative problem solving, spatial reasoning, and visual perception.

Design and architecture projects bring an important dimension of thinking to the program. The students learn to find reasons for their work outside of artistic self-expression, becoming divergent thinkers, and gaining a foundation for understanding a changing world.

By studying works from history and the present, students understand how art and design have made significant contributions in the shaping of culture. Students see that their creative work is part of a continuum with other artists, architects, and designers. Critiques develop the ability to observe, discriminate, compare, and contrast creative works. Students learn how to use critical language to interpret work and explain their understanding of its purposes.

The Vitruvius Program curriculum was developed with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

In 2011, this exceptional program was named the Best Art and Architecture School Curriculum in the UNITED STATES, by the Association of Architecture Organizations (AAO) and winner of the National School award. Summit represented the United States in the UIA Golden Cubes International Competition in Tokyo.

In 2009 Phoenix Magazine recognized the Vitruvius Program as one of the top five education programs in Metro-Phoenix.

The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art invited the Vitruvius Program at Summit School to create two different exhibitions for their young@art Gallery.

The first exhibit, Bridges: Connecting Earth to Sky, displayed from October 2010 to January 2011, and included architecture and design work from each Summit student in kindergarten through sixth grade.

The second exhibit, Cycles From Fields to Cities, displayed from February through April 2013, also includes student works from Finland, France, Russia and Sweden, features designs from third and fifth grade Summit students. The architectural project was co-created by Summit art instructor Kathleen Kupper. This project asks children from many countries to think reflectively about the current state of their city’s design, and challenges them to share how they would reconstruct and reconfigure old and new elements. Artworks range from architectural models and drawings to animations.

Click here to experience our art program

The preschool music program is based on the National Association for Music Education’s Pre-Kindergarten Standards. The following is an excerpt from “The School Music Program: A New Vision”, which describes the standards. Summit’s music program is enhanced with a large array of instruments and a teacher dedicated exclusively to the music program.

Musical Experiences for Preschool Age Children

Young children need an environment that includes a variety of sound sources, selected recorded music and opportunities for free improvised singing and the building of a repertoire of songs. An exploratory approach, using a wide range of appropriate materials, provides a rich base from which conceptual understanding can evolve in later years. A variety of individual musical experiences is important for children at this age, with little emphasis on activities that require children to perform together as a unit. As a result of their experiences with music, four-year-olds should initiate both independent and collaborative play with musical materials, and they should demonstrate curiosity about music.

Singing and playing instruments

Children Use their voices expressively as they speak, chant, and sing a variety of simple songs in various keys, meters, alone and with a group, becoming increasingly accurate in rhythm and pitch. Students experiment with a variety of instruments and other sound sources, and play simple melodies and accompaniments on instruments.

Creating music

Children improvise songs to accompany their play activities, improvise instrumental accompaniments to songs, recorded selections, stories, and poems. Additionally, they create short pieces of music, using voices, instruments, and other sound sources, and invent and use original graphic or symbolic systems to represent vocal and instrumental sounds and musical ideas.

Responding to music

Children identify the sources of a wide variety of sounds by responding through movement to music of various tempos, meters, dynamics, modes, genres, and styles to express what they hear and feel in works of music.

Understanding music

Children use their own vocabulary and standard music vocabulary to describe voices, instruments, music notation, and music of various genres, styles, and periods from diverse cultures. Students sing, play instruments, move, or verbalize to demonstrate awareness of the elements of music and changes in their usage and demonstrate an awareness of music as a part of daily life.

Ways To Enhance Your Child’s Music Education
• Take them to the Musical Instrument Museum! Located in Phoenix, this fabulous museum takes visitors on a sonic, visual, and tactile adventure of instruments from all over the world.
• Check out music recordings from your local library to listen to with your child. Listen to music of a wide variety of genres, styles, and cultures. Talk about the music with your child.
• Teach your child a favorite song. Ask your child to teach you a song they have learned.
• If you play an instrument, share the experience with your child. Perhaps, teach your child to play.
• Encourage your child to learn to play an instrument or sing.
• Encourage your child to create his or her own music.
• Go to concerts with your child. The Phoenix Symphony offers very reasonably priced family packages.
• Talk to your child about the importance of music in your life. Describe a great musical experience you’ve had. Ask your child to do the same.

In preschool, our curriculum is developmentally appropriate and relevant to the children’s class activities and daily life. We build on a framework of basic vocabulary to include songs, activities, and conversational phrases that can be integrated into the preschool day.

Spanish language experiences, as recommended by state (AZ) and national foreign language standards include:

Communication: Respond to simple commands, perform short plays, poems, and songs, and express and react to a variety of feelings.

Culture: Participate in age-appropriate cultural activities and recognize how the target language and its culture add to the richness of our own cultural diversity.

Connections: Discuss topics in other school subjects in the target language (e.g. math: “más-menos”, science: “los planetas”, etc.) and present reports in the target language orally and/or in writing on topics being studied in other classes.

Comparisons: Make basic comparisons between the celebrations of the target culture and their own culture (e.g. Halloween and “EL Día de los Muertos”) and compare and contrast a variety of art forms (e.g. music, dance, visual arts, and drama) with their own culture through oral and/or written descriptions and/or performances.

a developmentally appropriate and fun-filled experience for adventurous young children, 18 to 36 months of age AND their adult companion.

Join an experienced preschool teacher for two hours of exploration, play, art, music, movement and discovery every week, in the heart of Summit School of Ahwatukee’s NAEYC accredited preschool!

Adults will also have an opportunity to discuss relevant “Toddler Topics” with the teacher.

New classes begin in fall, spring and summer.

Who: Children 18 to 36 months attend with their adult companion

When: mornings, from 9 - 11am

Fall Class: September - December. Spring Class: January – April Summer Class: June and July

Where: In the heart of Summit School of Ahwatukee Preschool

Cost: $200 check payable to Summit School of Ahwatukee

To Enroll: Return the registration form and a check to the school’s front desk.

Example of Daily Schedule:

9:00 – 10:00 Classroom exploration: Enjoy a multitude of activities including art, building, fine motor activity, dramatic play and more!

10:00 - 10:15 Circle time: enjoy stories, songs in a group setting

10:15 - 10:30 Snack and Story time

10:30 - 11:00 Enjoy Summit's preschool playground, which feels more like a beautiful private park!

Please click here to download a copy of the 2013 Toddler Discoveries registration form.