SCK’s Pre-K Boost is a thoughtfully designed, play-based program led by Lisa Schalk, a seasoned early childhood educator. These sessions nurture early skills across literacy, numeracy, inquiry, emotional understanding, and creative expression—meeting each child exactly where they are. Every session is tailored, dynamic, and grounded in developmental best practices.
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Your child will benefit from focused, one-on-one attention in an environment that sparks confidence, joy, and curiosity. After each session, families receive a personalized recap that:
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- Offers a window into your child’s experience and progress
- Highlights areas of strength and emerging growth
- Shares suggestions for simple, meaningful ways to support learning at home
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Through a phased approach, children are introduced to foundational concepts in language, mathematics, science, and the arts—guided by rich materials, intentional play, and warm, responsive instruction. While each session is unique, the arc of the program is designed to strengthen core thinking skills and foster independence, emotional fluency, and joyful engagement with the world.
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This isn’t just preparation for school—it’s preparation for lifelong learning.

Phase 1 – Lisa works with your child to sow the seeds of early literacy, by reading together, analyzing stories in terms of sequence/structure, theme, character development, and action, and writing an original one-page story. The focus is on the joy of language, wordplay, vocabulary, and letter awareness.

Phase 2 – Through the use of manipulatives including blocks, geometric shapes, and small animal figures we will create dramatic play scenarios that foster numeracy awareness. Lisa will focus on basic concepts of one-to-one correspondence, simple mathematical concepts (including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), fractions, patterning, and measurement. We will also work with geometric shaped tiles to build an awareness of proportion, symmetry, balance, and area.

Phase 3 – Lisa will explore the cognitive skills involved in the process of scientific inquiry by designing a simple scientific experiment, making hypotheses, identifying assessment measures, and testing out our guesses. Designed to foster curiosity, logical reasoning, critical thinking, and positive risk-taking.

Phase 4 – To build on your child’s social/emotional intelligence, Lisa will focus on emotions. Using picture books and other materials, she will work with your child to identify, name, and analyze various emotions familiar to your child. They will discuss how emotions feel, how we can manage emotions, and how it is possible to feel more than one emotion at the same time.

Phase 5 – Fostering creativity, imagination, and collaboration your child will work with Lisa to create a detailed play scenario with families of animal figures. Materials used will include wooden train tracks and trains, artwork, and found treasures in our play area. We will focus on imagination and creative expression through storytelling, singing, movement, and visual art.