We will post a more comprehensive curriculum soon, listing our learning objectives, sample lesson plans and our daily schedules.
But to give you an idea of our curriculum let me tell you a bit about our philosophy of learning for the early years in life.
With the average life expectancy of somewhere beyond 70 years your child has a lot of learning ahead of them!
It is important for children to "love to learn."
"Teaching children to love to learn" is our philosophy in a nut shell.
We employ well qualified, enthusiastic teachers and we supply our classrooms with age and developmentally appropriate learning equipment and materials..
Teachers write and post lesson plans in each classroom from our youngest infants to our senior preschool classroom.
The teacher's primary objective is creating a learning environment that encourages the children to happily explore and investigate their surroundings.
All of our classrooms are center based. Center areas might include: reading area, writing/ fine motor center, art center, music area, dramatic play, blocks, math center, science/sensory table, etc... Often learning happens by discovery. For example a child learns about physics and geometry by building with blocks. Often times no one directly teaches the child during this activity. However, s/he may learn that a tower balances more easily with the bigger blocks on the bottom. Or that two triangular blocks can be put together to form a square. Or perhaps the child may learn that a bigger wooded block is heavier that a smaller block made of the same material. If they are playing with another child or a teacher they may learn that when two people work nicely together to build a tower it can get done faster. Or if each person has their own bin of blocks and they put their bins of block together a bigger tower can be built. The teacher’s primary job during this time is modeling, monitoring and encouraging.
Our curriculum for children two and up balances a combination of center based discovery and free play with small and large group learning. While the teacher is always interacting with the children during center time this time is primarily child directed. Small and large group time, while proving for much interaction form the children is primarily teacher directed. Even older one year olds are ready for large group time on a very limited basis. In the one year old room all of the children might come together on the learning rug for a song or a short story. Or a teacher might bring just a small group of children together to read or paint etc...
Children in our junior and senior preschool classes are able to have group time for a bit longer than our toddler age children. In these classroom this is often the time when new learning topics are introduced and "old topics" are reviewed. This is an excellent time for children to practice being good listeners and also taking turners speaking and participating. Calendar time, story time, sing songs and class discussions are just a few of the activities that may happen during group time.....
aug 9th... more to come soon
(more to come soon)