private preschools virginia beach Archives - Strelitz International Academy

Skills Our Graduates Learn at SIA

Posted on Wednesday February 23 , 2022 by Carin Simon

A student getting the graduation certificate from Heather Moore

Strelitz International Academy is an International Baccalaureate® elementary school in Virginia Beach and centrally located near Norfolk and Chesapeake. Our students experience an inquiry-based curriculum in which they learn a number of skills. These skills are applied inside and outside of the classroom. Thus, creating well-rounded individuals with critical thinking abilities. As the best affordable private school, we are proud to offer a bit of wisdom on how our program works.

Learning at SIA-An IB® PYP School

At Strelitz International Academy, we believe in setting your child up for success. That is why outside of the core curriculum, we work to provide our students with the skills they need to be excellent students and productive adults. A school is a place for learning. And in addition to the academic lessons, students at SIA learn the motor skills and morals that make them better humans. This includes learning critical thinking and analytical skills, language skills, music skills, and global understanding.

Critical Thinking and Analytical Skills

Strelitz International Academy follows the International Baccalaureate® (IB) approach to learning. Consequently, this approach uses inquiry-based learning as its foundation. Because of this, students at SIA are encouraged to ask questions and find the answers through research and discussion. Similarly, students are provided the room to think critically and independently. The IB program allows students to use their critical thinking and analytical skills. This allows them to solve problems, answer questions, and have productive conversations with their peers.

Language Skills

Students at SIA develop language skills through the use and appreciation of Hebrew. Because of this, children learn the Hebrew language in conversational and biblical understanding. As a result, understanding a second language is embedded into the many teachings and classes that we offer. This includes our course titled, Jewish life and learning. As a result, students learn to take action from the lessons they learn.

Music Skills

Music is both an art and a science. As a result, children are given the opportunity to express themselves. This comes from the technical aspects of learning an instrument and the creative aspects of creating music. Because of this, our program at SIA exposes students to music and instruments at a young age. These various instruments-Suzuki violins, other string instruments, recorders, and bells-allow students to explore the Jewish culture and build a creative foundation. Many of our graduates go on to take orchestra or band in Middle and High School because of their music foundation at SIA.

Global Understanding

The social studies program at SIA exposes students to a variety of cultures and communities. As a result, students learn the importance of their actions in regard to the world around them. We work with programs such as National Geographic Explorers and Empatico. This allows our students to connect with a global community. With the knowledge and ideals they learn, students feel empowered to be better global citizens.

Graduates of SIA

At SIA, children learn a variety of skills and lessons with the IB® program. Therefore, students who graduate from SIA, go on to become well-informed, productive, and high-achieving members of society. These skills help them be successful in all areas of life. As a result, our students become critical thinkers with analytical skills, multi-lingual, talented, and global citizens. Our students gain a wonderful foundation to set them up for success in Middle School and High School. During their last year at SIA, students are advised of top middle school programs in the area. Our students successfully transition to these programs with the skills they need to be successful.

Best Private Elementary Schools Virginia Beach

If you are looking for the best private elementary school in the Tidewater area, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, or Norfolk, Strelitz International Academy is here to help. We pride ourselves on the inquiry-based learning approach provided by the International Baccalaureate® program. The skills our graduates learn, set them up to be successful students and adults.

Interested in learning more? Check out our website to see how your child could develop and grow these invaluable skills. We are currently enrolling for the 2022-2023 school year and would love to see your child thrive.

To find out more and schedule a campus tour, please call 757-424-4327.

Fall Fun at Strelitz International Academy

Posted on Thursday November 25 , 2021 by Carin Simon

One of the endearing qualities about preschoolers is that everything, including the changing seasons, is still a new experience. This is an age when it’s easy to get children outside where they can appreciate the wonders of nature. Encourage your child’s curiosity and creativity with hands-on activities that celebrate the beauty of fall.

We created a variety of fun options for our students to explore, from playing in piles of leaves to investigating the pumpkin patch to making new friends in the petting zoo. Other encouraging activities included cornhole games, pounding pegs into pumpkins, making leaf rubbings, and of course, eating fall snacks!

This is only one of the special experiences that are part of our Early Years Families Program, where we concentrate on helping children flourish. We’d love to have your child join our school community. Enrollment is now open for our 2022-23 school year. Click here to find out more.

While you might not have a pumpkin patch or a petting zoo at your disposal, there are lots of options for celebrating autumn at home. In southeastern Virginia, we’re fortunate to be in a part of the country that usually offers a full spectrum of leaf colors in October and November.

Playing in a pile of them never gets old (see above) but there are even more fun activities that start with a leaf hunt, and end with your little ones getting creative with whatever they find.

Sticky Leaf Tree

What You’ll Need: fall leaves, contact paper, markers, tape.

Peel the back off of a long piece of contact paper and place it sticky side up on the table. Draw the outline of a tree with markers, then tape it to the wall. Your preschooler can then fill in the tree by sticking on the treasures they’ve found outside.

Leaf Rubbings

What You’ll Need: fall leaves, white paper, a white crayon, watercolor paints, and brushes.

Place the leaves under a white piece of paper and give your child a white crayon to scribble over the paper. This creates a rubbing. When your little one paints the rubbing with watercolors, the leaves are revealed.

Leaf Confetti

What You’ll Need: fall leaves, hole punch, glue stick, white paper.

Who knew confetti could be both pretty and biodegradable? This activity couldn’t be simpler and helps practice fine motor skills. Give your preschooler a hole punch to make confetti by hole-punching the leaves. Both the leaves and the confetti can be glued down to make some fabulous fall art. Another option is to crush up the leaves and glue them down on a tree template.

Leaf Memory Game

What You’ll Need: fall leaves, clear contact paper, card stock.

For this activity, make sure you have at least two of each leaf you gather. Cut the cardstock into rectangles large enough to fit your leaves, then do the same with the contact paper. Place a leaf on each piece of cardstock. You might want to use a small piece of tape or a glue stick to make sure it doesn’t move around. Then, place the contact paper carefully over each card. Once you’ve made all of your pairs of cards, turn them over and shuffle them around. Then have your child flip over two cards at a time to find a match.

Are you looking for a private Virginia Beach preschool for your 2 or 3-Year-old?

Strelitz International Academy is known for providing some of the best private school education in Hampton Roads within a warm and nurturing environment. We believe your child will flourish in a smaller class with a unique curriculum. Our exemplary teachers, staff, and administrators are all committed to putting your child on the path to a lifelong love of learning and educational excellence. To find out what other parents have to say about SIA, click here. Please give us a call at 757-424-4327 to find out more, or to schedule a visit to our campus.

Summer Fun for Toddlers

Posted on Friday August 13 , 2021 by Carin Simon

Adventures in Science Week Led us to Many New Discoveries!

Science offers so many exciting ways to engage young students. Our Adventures in Science Week was a fun-filled five days of activities and experiments we hope might start our early learners on the path to a life-long love of science.

Toddler Class

Magnets are pretty magical, even if you understand the properties behind them. For our magnetism activity, we learned how to use a magnetic block to push and pull paper clips through a plastic bag, watching as a trail of clips lengthened as we swirled it on top of the bag. The children also built with the magnet blocks, quickly figuring out that they only attached when they were placed in the right direction.

During our playground time, we traveled into another area of science and scooped up a cicada to examine. Our children were very curious to look at this bug! We taught the concept of evaporation by wetting down boxes and having the children “water paint” them as they dried.

For our weather unit, we created our own clouds and rainbows in a container using common household ingredients. The children were fascinated as they watched shaving cream puff up into clouds. Dripping watercolors over the clouds created a mesmerizing rainbow as the colors seeped through. The students were so entranced that we found another colorful science project involving the properties of oil and water.

Infant Class

Our adorable infant class also had a fun week, beginning our regular outside water play. The babies saw some older toddler friends in the opposite playground and had a good time interacting with them. What a great organic way to learn about being a part of a larger community, and the roles we all play within that community!

The class continued working on sitting up and tummy time. At Strelitz International Academy, we spend a lot of time focusing on strengthening core and neck strength in our wee ones, all through play activities. This is essential to helping them move up to the next level of their gross motor development.

You can recreate a simple sensory activity at home that was a big hit with both the babies and teachers. All you have to do is pour a handful of baby soap into a mixing bowl and use an electric mixer or whisk to stir it up, adding a little bit of water to loosen it up. Voila! You’ve made soapy foam bubbles!

Our Adventures in Science Week activities are just a few examples of the many ways to keep your young ones engaged and creative during the summer months. At Strelitz International Academy, our lively educational games keep your children active and learning all year long. Since the early years are crucial to healthy brain development, we encourage inquiry through play, singing, early literacy, and verbal acquisition at all developmental stages.

Searching for a “top private school near me”? We are a top private school serving Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Chesapeake with a proven track record of exceptional education. Strelitz’s International Academy’s IB Primary Years Program offers an integrated curriculum of core subject areas, supported by our specialty classes. Our culturally enriched curriculum benefits students in a variety of ways.

Our Infant/Toddler Program is for children six weeks to two years old. We’d love to welcome your child into this stimulating, supportive environment. There are still a few spots open for the 2021-2022 school year! For more information or to schedule a tour of one of the best private elementary schools in Virginia Beach, please contact Carin Simon, Admissions Director at 757-424-4327 or email.csimon@strelitzacademy.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

Advantages of Preschool for Toddlers

Posted on Monday July 26 , 2021 by Carin Simon

Three girls studying and doing there daily chores

As your sweet baby grows into a more independent child, you may be thinking about preschool. Even though it might be hard to send your little one off to school for the first time, providing your child with a quality private preschool education sets your son or daughter up for success.

The emotional skills and understanding of the world that children develop while very young will help them become constructive members of society throughout their lives. Research shows that preschool graduates are better prepared for school and eventually, earn more money as adults.

Here are some important reasons why private preschool is so important for toddlers:

Preschool Teaches Children How to Learn

Young children are constantly soaking up experiences like a sponge through playing and observing the world around them. Acclimating them to a school setting while toddlers is a great way for children to learn in ways that interest them, and instill the idea that learning, and school, is fun.

Preschool Develops Social Skills

Preschool is probably the first place where a child will spend long periods of time with other children and adults outside the family. This new environment provides the chance to learn essential interpersonal skills, such as how to pay attention, listen, cooperate, make friends, and learn the basics of conversation.

Preschool Teaches Children How to Self-Regulate

Inevitably, any time children play and engage in activities together, conflicts arise. Those times of frustration and anger are opportunities for teachers to provide “teachable moments,” where they can encourage children to notice the effect their behavior has on others and start practicing how to resolve conflict. These emotional skills will be vital to preschool graduates throughout their entire lives.

Preschool Boosts Pre-Literacy Skills

A big part of every preschool day are the variety of games and activities that help children build pre-literacy skills. These can include singing alphabet songs, learning rhymes to help distinguish between sounds, listening to stories read by their teacher, and playing with magnetic alphabet letters. An early positive association with reading often leads to a lifetime love of it.

Preschool teachers help children develop language capabilities by introducing new vocabulary and asking thought-provoking questions.

Preschool Gets Children Ready for Math

Along with reading, preschool builds the foundations for future success in math through calendar time, guided play and fun activities like sorting, matching, or counting games. Certain board games are also useful at helping young students develop an understanding of categories and numbers.

Preschool Nurtures Children’s Curiosity and Creativity

Young children have lively imaginations. It’s important to nurture their active minds to fuel learning and creativity. Preschool environments are set up to encourage and stimulate exploration. A good preschool teacher will encourage children to be curious and develop their own ideas and thoughts. They will ask questions and listen to children’s ideas rather than pushing “correct” answers.

Preschool Teaches Children How to Be Responsible

Preschool children are often given chances to practice how to be responsible. These include washing their hands, keeping personal belongings in cubbies, and putting toys back in their proper spots. In addition to self-care, preschoolers learn how to take care of others by helping other children learn skills they’re more competent at or by helping out in the classroom.

Preschool Helps Children Develop Cognitive and Motor Skills

Children build cognitive skills by engaging in activities that challenge them to try new things, ask questions, solve problems, and be more aware of the world around them. Preschool is centered around these types of activities, so children are able to learn more.

But the mind isn’t the only important part of your child’s development. In addition to outside play time, many preschool activities help children develop fine motor skills and physical coordination. For example they might be given projects that involve drawing, threading beads, even cutting with scissors.

Preschool Prepares Children for Kindergarten!

Over the years, kindergarten has become increasingly academic. A high-quality preschool education program will offer children the skills development they’ll need to prepare them for kindergarten and beyond.

After having learned basic social and communication skills, they’ll be more comfortable cooperating and asking for help. With strong pre-literacy, cognition, and math foundation skills, they’re less likely to struggle.

The Best Private Preschool in Hampton Roads

Are you looking for a private preschool in Virginia Beach for your 3 year old? The best preschools help children develop a drive to learn that they will take with them throughout their time in school and throughout their lives.

At Strelitz International Academy, our staff, administration, and teachers believe in inquiry-based education rather than the standardized curriculums used in public school. Our Early Years Programme follows the guidelines of developmentally appropriate practice promoted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children(NAEYC).

The Strelitz International Academy is an International Baccalaureate® World School for students between the ages of 3 and 12 (kindergarten through 5th grade).

A private preschool might just be the perfect choice for your toddler. We invite you to come join us, learn more about our curriculum and our dedication to helping children learn so we can get their journey started. Click here to find out more, or please give us a call at 757-424-4327.