Areas of Educational Focus
Growth & Development
- Sense of self, initiative and social relations
- Initiating play
- Making choices and plans
- Problem-solving and interpersonal conflict resolution
- Taking care of personal needs
- Relating to adults and peers
- Understanding oneself in relation to the world
- Inviting community visitors to share related talents and interests:
i.e. area professionals, specialists, artists, musicians, community workers and family members
- Sharing multicultural diversity
cooking, storytelling, language, arts, etc.
Creative Representation, Music & Movement
- Creating with clay and recycled materials
- Singing/listening to music from different cultures
- Moving to music
- Working with wood and tools
- Exploring dramatic play
(improvisation, expression, interpretation, and expanded perspective)
Communication, Language & Literacy
- Drawing, painting and writing
- Supporting the natural emergence of reading and writing
- Understanding the usefulness of reading and writing skills
- Exploring everyday communication processes
- Drawing, copying, and inventing personal systems for spelling and expression
- Reading and listening to stories/poems
- Relation of the children’s own stories
- Theater, communication and other social-rich play
Math, Science & Nature
- Counting, sorting, measuring and manipulating
- Exploring early logic
- Identifying sequence, change, and causality
(i.e. observing and understanding cause and effect by rolling a ball down a ramp, using a pulley, etc.)
- Comparing physical properties of objects
- Identifying position and direction
- Predicting, calculating, and patterning: introducing the scientific method to demonstrate why things happen
(i.e. throwing a ball, planting a seed, etc.)
- Experimenting with sand, water, color, light and sound
- Inventing mechanical and sensory activities
(blocks, wheels, gears and simple machines)
- Exploring nature as part of the environment:
i.e. on-site explorations with varied natural resources, recognizing the continual changes, identifying recurring patterns
- Studying the natural world (gardening, life cycles and animals)
