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)