Children 24 months through age 5 are eligible for our Preschool program. There are 2, 3, & 5 day programs. The aim is to prepare children for their Kindergarten experience.

At Grace Lutheran Preschool we believe that childhood is a vibrant period of life in which curiosity, inquiry and the quest for information about the world are primary motivators for children. Nothing can quite match the excitement of discovery and learning at an early age.

Educators agree that the first six years are the most significant in the development of a child. While it is essential that parents take the lead in encouraging this development, a professionally organized preschool program can help a child reach his or her full potential.

The preschool director is Janice Sims

Preschool Phone Number is 321-728-4709

E-mail inquiries can be sent to Janice Sims or Pastor Roger Wenninger

Grace Lutheran Preschool strives to provide a rich, warm and joyous Christian environment for discovery and learning. We offer this in a positive and fun atmosphere which encourages social, emotional, intellectual and physical development and growth.

Our school environment is safe, nurturing and non-competitive. Through the preschool experience, the children learn to interact positively with new adults and children, develop social skills through play and classroom experiences, and learn the fundamentals of caring, sharing and communicating ideas and feelings.

Our goal is to assist our students in the development of the skills that will enable them to be successful in elementary school. These skills are school readiness skills. We view school readiness as the ability to successfully cope with the many challenges of the elementary school day while learning the required concepts and curriculum.

We strive to pull together the pieces of sound early childhood education practices to create the best possible environment for children to reach their full potential in school readiness. To this end, we have based our program on developmentally appropriate practices. As the development levels of our students vary, so do the classroom experiences and activities.

When choosing the experiences, activities and concepts to expose the children to, we rely on two main sources. The first is our GLP “Aims” document which we created using several well respected early childhood educational resources to form our own set of developmentally appropriate practices for every age level in our school. The second source is the Florida School Readiness Performance Standards. This document, developed by the Florida Partnership for School Readiness and the Florida Children’s Forum, was created to enhance and help toward standardizing early childhood education.

We then take the developmentally appropriate skills and concepts from our GLP “Aims” and the Florida School Readiness Performance Standards and blend them into our thematic units of study such as oceanography or community helpers. Our teachers are masters at combining skill instruction, thematic concepts, and best teaching practices to create developmentally appropriate, exciting and enriching classroom experiences.

GLP offers classes from 9:00am to 12:00pm, Monday through Friday, meeting either two, three or five days a week, depending on the age level of the student. We operate on the Brevard County Public School schedule. When the public schools are in session, GLP is also in session.

Our Classroom Programs Include:
Two Year Old Classes
Children must be at least 24 months old to attend.

Two-year olds experience an explosion in both receptive and expressive language. Consequently, we support language
development in our very busy two-year old classrooms with lots of opportunities to speak, listen and sing! We encourage learning through parallel play.

There are 8 children in a two-year old class.

Three Year Old Classes
Children must be at least 36 months to attend.

The three-year old classes look more "school-like" in classroom arrangement. Here we expose the children to concepts such as one-on-one correspondence, sets and number concepts. We explore fine motor work to prepare for learning to write. The children transition from parallel play to cooperative play and we see the formation of real friendships.

There are 10 children in a three-year old class.

State Funded Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) Classes
Children must be at least 48 months old to attend.

At this level, the window of school readiness opens wide. The children explore beginning writing skills with paintbrushes, markers, crayons and even finger-paint. Fine motor skills are developed through lacing, scissors work and other manipulatives. VPK students begin experiences with letters and the sound/symbol connection. The development of social skills accelerates. The children learn about responsibility, cooperation and fairness.

There are 10 children in a VPK class.

Early Bird Program
We offer a program designed to accommodate families who prefer an earlier drop-off time. A teacher will be on duty at 8:00am each day to receive students in the entrance way to the Worship Center for relaxed playgroup activities until school begins.

Lunch Brunch
This is a relaxed, unstructured opportunity for preschoolers to continue their day at Grace and is offered to children who are at least three years old and completely potty trained. Two dismissal times are offered: 1:30pm and 3:00pm, five days a week.

The explosion of recent research on brain development has alerted us to the fundamental importance of the first years of life to virtually all later development. Early problems, left unaddressed, can compromise the foundations upon which later learning must build. By the same token, early intervention to address developmental problems often resolves the concerns completely. But it is clear that early detection and early intervention are key.

The Florida Legislature has mandated that childcare providers periodically screen the children in their care for developmental delays. (F.S. 402.3207). Grace Lutheran Preschool provides age appropriate educational and developmental screening for all students. The information gained through this process is vital to both parents and teachers as we strive to provide each child with all the opportunities necessary to reach his/her potential.

The type and number of screening instruments utilized will vary from child to child dependent on the child’s age and specific needs. Areas for screening may include:

Articulation - Screening of a child’s speech production

Cognitive/Language - Screening for verbal concepts, visual discrimination, logical relations, and basic school skills

Motor - Screening for gross and fine motor movement skills

Problem Solving - Screening for problem solving abilities and skills

Classroom Observations - Observation of classroom behaviors and functioning, including personal and social skills

In accordance with Florida Law, Grace Lutheran Preschool childcare professionals conducting screenings have been specifically trained in behavioral observations and assessment.

At Grace we believe life is a gift of God. With the gift of life has come mind, reason, affections, skills and abilities. For us the development of these gifts is a religious matter. Children will become familiar with numbers, letters, words, and learn to work with other children, and trust an adult other than Mom and Dad. Experiences which they have in preschool are the groundwork for their service in future vocations as engineers, plumbers, doctors, electricians, teachers, businessmen, parents, and so on. Such service to others is what God has called people into being for, which makes service in daily vocations a religious matter.

Our desire to be developmentally appropriate means that we do not teach abstract concepts associated with our religious beliefs such as sin or death, love or faith, right or wrong, good or bad. Nor do we introduce Preschool children to the Bible. Instead, we establish a secure environment wherein they experience Godly respect, fair treatment and help with new discoveries from other adults, and wherein they experience Godly working together, boundaries, and manners with other children. In addition, preparation for religious education in their later years occurs through naming actions and story-telling. As occasions present themselves, desirable actions are reinforced through naming. When a child shares a piece of paper or a toy, the teacher says “I like the way you shared.” In this way the action is both named and reinforced. Story-telling and discussions about stories prepare children for handling the narratives of scripture in their later years.

A fifteen-minute chapel session is conducted one morning a week by Pastor Roger in the Worship Center. The children sing songs and learn to pray in the language of a child’s experience; to thank God for families, teachers, friends, and pets; and to ask God in prayer for help in things like learning. At Christmas time Pr. Wenninger talks very briefly about giving. At Easter time he talks about new life using eggs, flowers and butterflies as examples.