FAQ's

Yes! We offer several options for your child to extend their school day. There are three segments of Extended Day, 12:00-1:00, 1:00-1:45, and 1:45-2:30.

12:00 – 1:00: Supervised play and lunchtime with lunch provided from home. Available for 2s on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Available for 3s and 4s Monday – Friday.

1:00 – 1:45: Supervised play or optional Enrichment Class. Available for 3s, 4s, and K, Monday – Friday

1:45 – 2:30: Supervised play or optional Enrichment Class. Available for 3s, 4s, and K, Monday – Thursday

Enrichment Classes are available to all children in the Threes, Fours, and Kindergarten classes. There is limited availability for these classes and there are three sessions during the school year (Fall, Winter, and Spring).

A child entering the Threes class at the beginning of September should be sufficiently toilet-trained to spend three hours in class without having “accidents” and should be cooperative when asked to use the restroom at periodic intervals. Three year old classrooms are not equipped to handle children still in diapers or pull-ups. If your child requests your help with hygiene, we encourage you to teach them proper techniques, as they should handle these tasks independently while at school. All children in the Threes, Fours, and Kindergarten classes must be fully and independently toilet-trained at the beginning of the school year to attend class. Each child should be wearing underwear, not Pull-Ups or diapers, at school.

For the purpose of clarification, our definition of fully toilet-trained is:
1. The child recognizes when he/she needs to go to the restroom.
2. The child verbally informs an adult of the need to go to the restroom.
3. The child enters the restroom on his/her own.
4. The child manipulates his/her clothing off and on with little or no assistance.
5. The child sits or stands at the commode and handles own cleaning (wiping) needs.
6. The child washes his/her hands and rejoins the class.

Visit the admissions page or email preschool@dunwoodyumc.org to inquire.

The DUMC Preschool is open 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon. Kindergarten students attend from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The optional Extended Day (EXD) program follows the morning for preschool children.

Enrichment classes are available for students in Threes, Fours, and Kindergarten. Class offerings include:

BALLET & TAP
Ballet & Tap is the perfect introduction to dance. Students will learn beginning steps, terminology, synchronized and expressive dance movement. Through this fun-filled, enriching environment, children will gain self-confidence, poise, grace and enhanced performance skills. Each student will need a leotard, ballet and tap shoes.

GAME PLAY
Game Play introduces the skills, strategies, and development of cooperative play for games children play. Game Play will include enhanced skill learning for team sports including soccer, kick ball, basketball and baseball. We will intersperse the enhanced team sport skills with popular playground games such as scatter ball, four square, Frisbee, red rover and jump rope. Game Play will include development of good sportsmanship, winning, losing and team play.

KIDS IN THE KITCHEN
Children who participate in our cooking classes, Kids In The Kitchen, will have the opportunity to enhance creativity, literacy and math skills by being involved in enjoyable, hands-on cooking activities. As your young chefs cook up fun creations, they will also practice valuable skills such as measuring, counting and identifying or sorting shapes and sizes. Each week, we will read a popular children’s book, song, or poem to introduce the week’s theme then tie that theme together with a fun, delicious, hands-on cooking activity.

ART
Your child will enjoy this opportunity to be creative with a wide range of art materials and fun techniques that go beyond the preschool day. They will explore painting, drawing, papier machè, clay, and more. It will be fun, messy, and hands on. Your artist supplies the imagination and we supply the rest!

PHONICS
Phonics enrichment classes are designed to complement the daily instruction the children receive in their Fours classes. Lessons will include phonemic awareness skills such as attending to sound, rhyming and segmenting sentences, compound words and syllables. Letter recognition, as well as, letter/sound correlations will also be taught. Lessons will incorporate games, music and movement, poetry and art to address the importance of multi-sensory experiences in early learning. For Kindergarteners, lessons will also include blending and segmenting onsets and rimes and phonemes, as well as, phoneme manipulation.

STEM
Our fun scientific discovery will include hands-on experiments wearing our special lab coats. Topics may include hot/cold, states of matter, air pressure, nutrition, heart health, environmental awareness and recycling. When weather permits, we will be outside observing nature and the seasonal changes using all our senses.

SPANISH
¡Hola! Your little linguist will love learning Spanish the fun way. An introduction to “Español” will be taught through hands-on activities including games, music and movement and stories. Language skills covered will include greetings and introductions, numbers, colors, basic vocabulary words and more!

TENNIS
Our tennis program will teach the fundamentals of tennis. The focus will be on basic hand/eye coordination, racquet/ball manipulation, strokes, tennis terms and very basic rules of the game. Tennis lessons will be mixed with fun games to nurture an interest in tennis while teaching the basics of a sport they may play for a lifetime!

By the first day of school, we are required to have the following forms from each child:
• Completed Application including all current addresses, phone numbers
• Certificate of Immunization—Georgia Form #3231. (NO EXCEPTIONS.)
• Emergency Contact and Medical Release Form
• Allergy Action Plan (if applicable)
A current Georgia immunization certificate (Form #3231) is due on or before the FIRST DAY of school in order for your child to be admitted to a classroom. Following the expiration of an immunization form, a child will not be allowed to remain at DUMC Preschool beyond 30 days unless a new Certificate of Immunization is on file at the school.

The Curriculum at DUMCP is guided by our mission to provide a developmentally appropriate education in a loving, Christian environment where children are nurtured and encouraged to develop cognitively, socially, emotionally, physically and spiritually to their full potential.

Our programs meet the Georgia Early Learning and Development Standards (GELDS) and the Kindergarten Georgia Standards of Excellence (K – GSE) while maintaining a balance of active, child-initiated learning and teacher-directed instruction. In addition, we allow for physical movement, active communication and interaction and individual and group problem solving.

The Creative Curriculum is the thread that ties our programs together by guiding teachers in developmentally appropriate practices across all age levels. It is a center based curriculum that encourages child-focused activity. Young children are actively motivated learners. They study the world through play. In each classroom, there are clearly defined interest areas where children can engage in activities such as creative art, blocks and building, dramatic play, reading and relaxing, science, manipulatives, writing, and sensory/water play. Children are encouraged to work with partners or in small groups. These areas are adapted and rearranged periodically to meet the current needs and interests of the children. Play possibilities are suggested by the teachers through arrangement of materials and selected props. Use of the materials is open ended.

Children are immersed in language and literature during Circle Time when the teacher leads the class in story reading, songs, poems and finger plays. Additionally, lessons pertaining to a weekly theme (typically science or social studies related) mathematical concepts, and for older children, phonological awareness activities are explored during Circle Time.

Our fours classes further develop early literacy and fine motor skills through the use of Heggerty Phonemic Awareness, SRA Imagine It Phonics, and Handwriting Without Tears curricula. The Kindergarten curriculum includes the use of Heggerty Phonemic Awareness, SRA Imagine It Phonics, Math Their Way, and Handwriting Without Tears.