The Creative Curriculum for Early Childhood

Our Philosophy

The philosophy behind our curriculum is that young children learn best by doing. Learning isn't just repeating what someone else says; it requires active thinking and experimenting to find out how things work and to learn firsthand about the world we live in.

In their early years, children explore the world around them by using all their senses (touching, tasting, listening, smelling, and looking).

In using real materials such as blocks and trying out their ideas, children learn about sizes, shapes, and colors and they notice relationships between things.

In time, they learn to use one object to stand for another. This is the beginning of symbolic thinking. For example, they might pretend a stick is an airplane or a block is a hamburger. These early symbols - the stick and the block - are similar in shape to the objects they represent. Gradually children become more and more able to use abstract symbols like words to describe their thoughts and feelings. They learn to "read" pictures which are symbols of real people, places and things. This exciting development in symbolic thinking takes place during the pre-school years as children play.

·         Play provides the foundation for academic or "school" learning. It is the preparation children need before they learn highly abstract symbols such as letters (which are symbols for sounds) and numbers (which are symbols for number concepts). Play enables us to achieve the key goals of our early childhood curriculum. Play is the work of young children.

The Goals of Our Curriculum

The most important goal of our early childhood curriculum is to help children become enthusiastic learners. This means encouraging children to be active and creative explorers who are not afraid to try out their ideas and to think their own thoughts. Our goal is to help children become independent, self-confident, inquisitive learners. We're teaching them how to learn, not just in preschool, but all through their lives. We're allowing them to learn at their own pace and in the ways that are best for them. We're giving them good habits and attitudes, particularly a positive sense of themselves, which will make a difference throughout their lives.

Our curriculum identifies goals in all areas of development,

·         Social: To help children feel comfortable in school, trust their new environment, make friends, and feel they are a part of the group.

·         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.

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 start in school.

Fit For Me

Fit For Me: Activities for Building Motor Skills in Young Children is a program of developmentally appropriate gross motor activities for preschool and kindergarten children and for primary-grade children with special needs.  This field-tested program introduces young children to a wide range of movements.  Through these movements, the program develops basic motor skills, increases self-confidence, and can lead to a lifetime of healthy physical activity.  In addition, the activities reinforce such concepts as size, shape, texture, sound, smell, relative position, and language.

Food...Early Choices (Chef Combo)

Food - and the attitudes, values, and behaviors related to food - plays a basic part in everyone's life - each and every day. Not only is food physically necessary for energy, health, and growth, but it also plays a vital role in the social, psychological, and economic aspects of life.

Education about food and nutrition makes very basic and important contributions to the quality of life. Nutrition education also makes important contributions to the total educational program for young children. Activities with food are necessarily personal, concrete, and involving important criteria for significant and successful learning experiences. In addition, learning activities related to food open the way for learning and developing in many other areas.

Early experiences with food establish attitudes and behavior patterns which have lasting influence; early nutrition education programs can make an important and lasting contribution to a young child's life.

Food...Early Choices provides a variety of opportunities to teach young children about food and good eating habits. Every activity and every resource material is designed to be appropriate for the young child and to provide a rich educational experience. Not only are nutrition concepts learned, but the activities also contribute to the child's social, emotional, and cognitive development. 
  
 

Developing Understanding of Self and Others (DUSO)

Developing Understanding of Self and Others (DUSO) is a program designed to help children of preschool age understand social and emotional behavior. DUSO encourages children to develop positive self-images, to become more aware of the relationship between themselves and other people, and to recognize their own needs and goals.

The DUSO approach to learning makes extensive use of listening, discussion, and dramatic play to focus on feelings, communication, and problem solving.  Activities include stories, guided fantasies, puppetry, role play, feeling word activities, career awareness, music, and art.

Here We Go, Watch Me Grow!

This curriculum filled with a year-round collection of enjoyable learning activities to help young children make smart, healthy choices as they learn about the world. This preschool health education curriculum can be easily integrated into the natural preschool environment and provides comprehensive coverage of all the important health areas, including: growth and development; mental/emotional health; physical health; family life; nutrition; disease prevention; and safety and first aid. Widely field tested and carefully developed this curriculum offers activities and content that are free of gender and race bias.

• All activities can be added to existing preschool learning centers, such as art, blocks, housekeeping, manipulative and science areas.
• Creative teaching ideas, including discovery boxes, learning experiments, helping hands tree, language experience stories, activity walks and classroom guests.
• Activities that encourage young children to make wise choices about hygiene, nutrition and disease prevention.
• Growth and development activities, investigating the five sense of vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
• Preschooler safety skills, including pedestrian safety, telephone emergency skills, and specific safety rules for home, school and riding in the car.
• Family life education, including ways preschoolers can contribute to family well-being and happiness.
• A resource list of classic books, songs, poems, rhymes and finger plays, selected to be free of gender and race bias.

Second Step

Second Step for Preschoolers is a curriculum designed to reduce impulsive and aggressive behavior in young children and increase their level of social competence.  It does this by teaching skills in empathy, impulse control and anger management.

The goal of this program is to build children’s social skills and self-esteem by giving them tools to solve everyday problems.  Children who learn and use the skills presented in this program are more likely to get along with other people and do better in school.

Skills and lessons in the program include:

Empathy Training

Children learn to,

• identify feelings (happy, mad, scared, and so on)
• predict how other people feel (by reading faces and body language)
• show others they care (by responding to others’ feelings)

Impulse Control

Children learn to,

• solve problems
• perform social skills (for example, sharing, taking turns)

Anger Management

Children learn to,

• calm down
• redirect their feelings in more positive ways