Pre-K that gets your 4-year-old kindergarten-ready.
Our Pre-K 4 classroom in our second building is built specifically for the year before kindergarten. Letters and numbers, scissors and lines, social skills and self-regulation — all the things kindergarten teachers tell us they wish more incoming students had. 1:8 ratio with a lead teacher who's done this for years.
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Ratio
1 teacher : 8 children
Age range
4 years
Building
Second building
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · 2 snacks
Everything that comes with our pre-k 4 program.
1:8 teacher-to-child ratio
Located in our second building, purpose-built for older kids
Pre-writing, letter recognition, number sense, and beginning reading
Scissors, glue, fine-motor work daily
Group rotations and structured listening activities
Direct hand-off relationships with Starpoint kindergarten teachers
What makes our pre-k 4 program work.
The year before kindergarten is one of the most sensitive academic years your child will ever have. Kindergarten teachers across the country, ours in Starpoint included, will tell you that the gap between kindergarten-ready and kindergarten-not-ready is one of the most stubborn academic gaps to close — and that gap shows up in surprising places.
It is rarely about whether a four-year-old knows their letters. It is about whether they can sit for a 10-minute small-group lesson, follow a two-step direction, hold scissors correctly, write their own name with reasonable letter formation, take turns in a structured game, recover from frustration, and tell another child what they need without hitting. Our Pre-K 4 classroom in our second building is built specifically around those skills — what the field calls executive function and self-regulation, layered on top of solid academic exposure.
We teach letter sounds, beginning blending, number sense to twenty, simple addition concepts, calendar work, days of the week. We do scissors, glue, lacing, bead-stringing, the whole fine-motor curriculum kindergarten teachers wish for. But we do all of it in a way that builds the muscle of sitting, listening, taking turns, and trying again — because that is what kindergarten actually demands. The 1:8 ratio means our lead teacher, who has done this work for years, can run real small-group instruction every day.
What a pre-k 4 day actually looks like.
Pre-K 4 mornings start with arrival, breakfast, and a soft choice time as kids trickle in. Morning meeting is a real, structured circle: calendar, weather, daily news, a short read-aloud chosen to seed a vocabulary or comprehension thread, and a preview of small-group work for the day.
The morning runs in a workshop model: while one small group is at the teacher table doing direct instruction (today maybe letter-sound blending, tomorrow maybe number bonds to ten), the other groups are at literacy, math, fine-motor, science, and writing centers — all hands-on, all designed to reinforce the skill work in play. Outdoor time on the school-age side of our campus comes after the workshop block.
Lunch, then quiet rest with a book or a low-key choice. Afternoon is more rotational: an art project, a science investigation, sometimes a cooking activity, dramatic play, blocks. Specials get layered in across the week — dance with Amazin Grace, gymnastics with Flips, music.
Pickup. Your four-year-old comes home with a finished project, a story to tell, and one new letter sound, number, or vocabulary word they did not know in the morning.
Why Niagara County families choose our pre-k 4 program.
The families who choose our Pre-K 4 are usually thinking ahead — their child will be in Starpoint or Lockport or Newfane kindergarten next September, and they want to make sure that transition is smooth. We give them a couple of things they cannot easily get elsewhere.
First, our lead teacher has been doing this for years and works directly with Starpoint kindergarten teachers, so the curriculum and expectations are aligned to what the receiving classrooms actually want. Second, we are in the second building purpose-built for older kids, with a different feel from the toddler side — kids feel like big kids here. Third, the 1:8 ratio means real small-group instruction every day, not the 1:20 of a half-day pre-K elsewhere. Fourth, dance, gymnastics, and computer time are built in, not paid add-ons.
And fifth: we send four-year-olds to kindergarten ready — Starpoint kindergarten teachers tell us so directly.
Common pre-k 4 questions.
What are your teacher-to-child ratios?
Infant 1:4, Toddler 1:5, Preschool 1:7, Pre-K 1:8, School Age 1:10. We meet or exceed every NY OCFS minimum, and real-world ratios are usually better.
Tour the Pre-K classroom.
30-minute private tour. No sales pitch. Most parents enroll within a week.