Programs

• Curriculum
• Services

INFANT & TODDLER PROGRAM

In addition to our children’s interests, our primary resources are:

• Active Learning Series
• The Creative Curriculum
• Infant-Toddler Planning Guide

Every baby is unique.  The most appropriate care occurs in an environment that feels like home where children are free to explore and teachers encourage their emerging interests.  Using the five senses is the most natural way for babies to learn.  We plan activities emphasizing sensory, language, music and motor skills in a safe and healthy place.  We begin sign language with our babies and toddlers to give them a way to express their wants and needs before they are able to speak.  Having an alternative way to communicate before speech develops gives us a way to know what our children are thinking.

Curiosity drives young children to investigate.  Our toddler program provides choices while supporting curiosity.  Our toddler program includes activities to support learning through exploration, sensory activities, dramatic play, language and small muscle activities.

• Planned Experiences:  activities to support learning through exploration
• Sensory:  messy area that includes art activities
• Dramatic Play:  home living area
• Language:  cozy “get away” place to relax with a book
• Small Muscle:  discovery area with manipulatives to dump and fill

PRESCHOOL PROGRAM

Our preschool program features studies which are made up of in depth investigations that begin with the children’s questions.  Some questions take a few days to explore while others require a week or more.  Each study is organized into different areas of development and learning:  social emotional, physical, language, literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, and the arts.

In the Buildings Study, for example, we start by asking, “What do we know about buildings?  What do we want to find out about buildings?”  As we investigate, we explore what buildings in our neighborhood look like, who builds buildings, what tools do they use, what are buildings made of, what is special about our building, and what happens inside buildings.  Our children participate in “hands on” learning activities as part of their investigation of a specific study topic.  The classrooms are transformed by the activities and materials in each interest area.

We start each morning with the Question of the Day.  In our large group time we continue with our discussions and shared writing experiences.  During Read-Aloud time, the children enjoy listening to the books we select for the study and participating in the book discussion cards.  We have the opportunity for math and literacy lessons as well as music and movement activities and our Spanish program during small group time.  We promote learning as we follow the Early Learning Standards for North Carolina Preschoolers (www.earlylearning.nc.gov) to include:

• Exploring animals, plants, and providing collections for sorting and classifying
• Inviting children to dictate stories
• Making sound-to-letter matches using letter name knowledge
• Journal writing
• Including sensory materials such as paint, playdough, and clay
• Creating and reading simple graphs
• Displaying props to reflect different themes, jobs, and cultures
• Learning names of numbers, counting, ordinal numbers, sequencing, and one-to-one correspondence
• Exposing children to the scientific method of inquiry; observing, questioning, predicting, experimenting, and representing results
• Providing experiences for children to use a variety of technologies
• Book of the Month
• Charting new vocabulary

Families are our children’s first teachers and we benefit from including families as partners in their education.  Our families contribute to their children’s learning by sharing their culture, sharing a talent or job, participating in a study, or enjoying our end of study celebrations.  We offer Family Partnership activities that can extend the investigative studies to the home environment.