FMPS Preschool is a program for the “Whole Child.”   The responsibility is to provide a service to the community for the highest type of early education through:

1. A well organized program to meet the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual needs.
2. A loving home like/ classroom environment.
3. Fully utilizing the physical facilities of Fort Mill, for the benefit of the  FMPS community.
4.  For children to enjoy group experiences outside the home.
5. Loving encouragement and guidance of children toward independence, responsibility, and social consciousness.
6. A positive approach to learning.

General Goals

1. To create a atmosphere so children may become aware of themselves as a great person.
2. To accept peers as persons with their own worth, regardless of real or imagined differences.
3. To help children accept mature authority and loving interest outside the home.
4. To work and play well with other children, in-group settings.
5. To create an atmosphere in which a child may develop self-confidence and independence.
6. To make choices, think, and problem solve, for one’s self, and live with those choices.
7. To learn what it means to be part of a group.
8. To speak and express self clearly.
9. To develop an appreciation of literature, and the arts (music, drama, poetry, art, and more).
10. Provide an atmosphere of co-operation in which parent, teacher and child can learn together.

Specific Goals

1. Develop Gross Motor Skills- Young children need opportunities to develop their bodies and coordination by running, jumping, climbing, lifting, pushing, and pulling. Physiological readiness precedes other learning.
2. Develop Fine Motor Skills- Small muscle, hand-eye coordination. Young children need opportunities to practice with things to put in, take out, match, fit, connect, and disconnect. The environment provides the developmental materials- (manipulative, puzzles, pegs, play-doh, beads, etc.)
3. Develop Language Arts- Children learn vocabulary and the rhythm of speech through listening to their own peers and other languages as they are spoken and sung in many forms.  Classroom libraries, story telling, self expression (puppets, telephones), games, alphabet letter, calendar, recognition (name, address, phone number,) expression through show and tell are only a few of the means of communication which are vital to both personal and academic success.
4. Develop Social Concepts- Sociodramtic play helps a child to progress from solitary role-playing, to sharing and understanding rules and limits.  Through housekeeping, dress up, blocks, field trips and snack, the child begins to feel secure in himself, family, and community.
5. Develop Creative Expression- Experimentation, discovery, the experience itself, is the value of arts and crafts at an early age.  They learn about basic colors, and shapes, through painting, coloring, cutting, gluing, play-doh, and sand/water play.  Children learn to control the medium and satisfaction comes with learning the creation of something that is uniquely their own.
6. Develop Science and Nature- The more the young child knows and understands about their world, the more independent and confident they can become.  Learning about seasons, weather, bodies, senses, health and nutrition are only a part of the concepts.