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Our Curriculum Identifies Goals in all Areas of Development
The activities we plan for children, the way we organize the environment, select toys and materials, plan the daily schedule, and talk with children, are all designed to accomplish the goals of our curriculum and give your child a successful and positive early childhood experience.
- Social: To help children feel comfortable in school, trust their new environment, make friends, and feel they are a part of the group.
- Social/Emotional: To help children experience pride and self- confidence, develop independence and self-control, and have a positive attitude toward life.
- Cognitive: To help children become confident learners by letting them try out their own ideas and experience success, and by helping them acquire learning skills such as the ability to solve problems, ask questions, and use words to describe their ideas, observations, and feelings.
- Physical: To help children increase their large and small muscle skills and feel confident about what their bodies can do.
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Art Center
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The art center provides children with the opportunity to put together new ideas and products based on past experiences. It is a natural developmental process that begins during infancy and is at its peak during a child’s early years. The use of self-expressive materials at the art center is one of the primary ways this creativity is developed.
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Develop muscles used for fine motor skills, refine eye-hand coordination, fine motor control and the sense of balance.
Enhance self-expression of feelings, the ability to channel frustrations and anger in a socially acceptable manner, instill pride and confidence, foster an appreciation of differences, and promote cooperation and sharing on group projects.
Enhance verbal expressions as projects are described, increase vocabulary through exposure to different materials, tools, colors, texture, and positional words are refined.
Provide opportunity for sorting, classifying, making choices, decision making, expressing knowledge of the environment; stimulate interest, imagination and creativity; and develop planning skills and concepts of cause and effect.
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Literacy Center
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Through the Literacy Center children practice essential skills for reading, writing and spelling. They have the opportunity to reinforce and extend these skills while working independently or in small groups. The Literacy Center activities enable children to confidently move toward becoming successful readers and communicators.
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Strengthen eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, visual discrimination and auditory discrimination.
Develop cooperation, self-control, self-esteem and confidence.
Develop an understanding of the importance of sounds and print in communication, build vocabulary, sound m emory, comprehension, listening skills and verbal expression.
Provide opportunities for naming, identifying, recalling, and predicting.
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Writing Center
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Children love to write and read their writings to anyone who will listen. The Writing Center provides children the opportunity to communicate through writing in a variety of different experiences. The Writing Center encourages children’s early interest in writing and provides a foundation that reinforces their beginning efforts and desire to write.
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Enhance fine motor skills, develop visual discrimination, and develop eye- hand coordination.
Allow for the expression of feelings and emotions, develop appreciation for the writing of others, and promote cooperation, teamwork, sharing and collaboration.
Increase oral communication skills and vocabulary, develop spelling, phonetic skills, understanding of the purposes of writing, and extend reading skills.
Develop thinking, reasoning, questioning, creativity and imagination, and promote problem solving skills.
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Math Center
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The math center provides a solid foundation for exploring beginning math concepts, practicing new skills, and applying skills that children have mastered. The Math Center offers many experiences to facilitate growth and enhance skills in all areas of development.
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Strengthen fine motor control, and refine eye-hand coordination.
Develop self-control, promote perseverance and confidence, enhance cooperation through sharing materials and working together to solve a problem.
Introduce the language of mathematics and enhance the ability to ask questions and explain solutions.
Introduce and refine sorting, matching, classifying, sequencing, patterning, one-to-one correspondence, rote counting, number combinations, problem solving.
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Science and Sensory Center
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The Science and Sensory centers are an integral part of the curriculum and stimulate children’s natural curiosity and desire to learn about the world around them. Children are introduced to the scientific method which includes: 1. Making observations, thinking of possible reasons why things happen, trying out these reasons or potential causes. The Science and sensory centers are areas where children are encouraged to explore and discover something about their world in more detail. They are areas where children are encouraged to ask questions such as “ What made that happen?”, “What would happen if ?”, or “How could we find out?”
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Enhance eye-hand coordination, fine motor control and balance.
Develop cooperation with others, pride in seeing an experiment through to completion and responsibility for clean-up at the conclusion of play.
Develop vocabulary, verbal expression, ability to ask questions and describe objects and events.
Develop thinking, reasoning, observing, exploring, questioning, discovering, decision making, conservation of volume, problem solving, comparing and contrasting, cause-and-effect, and creativity.
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Block Center
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Block building
Block building
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Blocks are a key example of how young children learn through play. Young children do not often pre-plan their structures. Their creations are influenced by what has been seen in the environment.
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Develop large muscles as they carry blocks from place to place, refine small motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and sense of balance as they stack and place blocks together.
Promote cooperation, working with others, sharing, acceptance of others’ ideas, self-esteem, and confidence.
Increase vocabulary and communication skills such as conversation, asking questions, labeling, making-up stories and using comparative language such as larger, taller, or bigger.
Develop concepts of number, size, shape, length, height, weight, area, part-to-whole relationships, problem solving one-to-one correspondence, sequencing, cause-effect relationships, fractions, adding, subtracting, testing ideas, estimating and measuring.
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Dramatic Play Center
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Young children love make-believe activities. The Dramatic Play Center allows children the opportunity to act out their real world. They can experience different roles, express feelings, and imitate actions and character traits of those around them. It is a place where the most creative, spontaneous, and involved play occurs. The open-endedness of the dramatic play center allows each child to be successful on their own developmental level.
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Develop fine motor skills, extend gross motor development, and develop visual discrimination and eye-hand coordination.
Provide a means to express feelings and emotions; develop awareness of self, family, and society; promote cooperation, working with others, sharing and taking turns.
Increase oral communication skills, extend and enhance vocabulary, extend gross motor development, develop pretend reading and writing.
Develop creativity and imagination, promote problem-solving skills, and extend symbolic use of items and abstract thinking.
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Cooking Center
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The Cooking Center provides rich, sensory experiences and gives children first-hand opportunities to practice skills in math, reading, science and communication.
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Enhance fine motor skills, develop hand/eye coordination.
Promote good manners, develop awareness of other cultures through preparing and tasting different foods, promote cooperation, working with others, sharing and self-esteem.
Increase oral communication skills and vocabulary, develop the ability to “read” picture recipes, extend understanding of the purposes of writing, and enhance left-to-right directionality.
Develop knowledge of nutrition and raises health awareness, promote problem solving skills, and develop math/science skills.
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Library & Listening Center
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The Library Center is a comfortable place where students can relax and enjoy a good book, fostering a love of reading. It is a place where students can interact with each other as they read with a partner or discuss books they have read.
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Strengthen eye-hand coordination, eye movement, and fine motor skills.
Provide an opportunity to communicate feelings and deal with difficult situations, develop concern and understanding for others, enhance self-esteem, and encourage sharing time and materials with others.
Build vocabulary, comprehension, listening skills, verbal expression, story telling, and reinforce the importance of print in communication.
Develop letter and word identification, understanding of symbols, prediction, sequencing, application of past experience s to new situations, and imagination.
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Music and Movement Center
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Music delights young children and invites them to participate. The music center is where children experiment with sounds while they create their own music. They gain an appreciation and love of music that will bring them enjoyment for years to come.
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Enhance fine and gross motor skills, develop rhythm, balance, and spatial awareness.
Provide a means to express feelings and emotions, enhance self-concept, promote cooperation and working with others, and induces feelings of calm and relaxation.
Increase oral communication skills, vocabulary growth and listening skills; develop an appreciation for poetry and rhyme, and increase auditory discrimination skills.
Develop creativity and imagination, promote problem solving skills, enhance concept development, and encourage exploration and promotes discovery.
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Outdoor Environment
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The development of motor skills is essential to the total growth process of children. Current research indicates that movement activates the brain and prepares it for learning. The outdoor environment is the natural place for this to occur. Outdoor play activities provide opportunities for children’s natural motivation to move and learn.
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Enhance large motor and eye-hand coordination, balance, strength, endurance and manipulation.
Nurture cooperation, negotiation, turn taking and role playing.
Facilitate vocabulary development, positional words and conversational skills.
Reinforce sorting, classifying, creativity, imagination, problem solving, exploration, discovery, spatial relations and conversation through sand and water activities.