The Learning Garden
A Quality Child Development and Preschool Center
Curriculum for Infants & Toddlers
- Build sense of trustworthiness through responsive and predictable care
- Interact with the child to let him know that he is a valued and precious being (build self identity)
- Utilize American Sign Language for our pre-verbal children to help with communication until the child has developed oral language to communicate his/her needs
- Build a strong sense of autonomy by treating the child as an individual and allowing the child opportunities for independence
- Encourage active learning and problem solving by providing a safe environment for the child to explore through sight, touch, sound, and movement
- Build language through conversing, singing, and reading
- Enhance motor development – reaching, grasping, crawling in and out, throwing and pulling
- Enhance cognitive development – object permanence, cause and effect experiences, language, listening and responding to sounds and voices
- Enhance social development – playing among others, positive peer interactions, and expressing emotions towards others
Planning for infants and toddlers involves lesson plans as well as opportunities for experience. When teachers organize materials for the room, they take into account children’s individual differences along with their knowledge of child development. Planning is based on observations of the children using their interests, their new skills, and their reactions to materials.
Curriculum for Preschoolers
- Develop a respect for individual and cultural differences through discussion, literature, and role modeling
- Provide opportunities for the child to interact, guided by models of socially acceptable behavior
- Assist child in learning to live comfortably in a social environment and in the family
- Enhance the child’s self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-confidence by offering many opportunities for a child to succeed, express ideas, and understand his/her emotions and to attain skills to control them
- Provide opportunities for math, science, reading, memory skills, language development, and social science
- Increase attention span and follow simple directions
- Foster creativity and self-expression through art, music, and dramatic play
- Develop small muscles by using scissors, paste, clay, blocks, puzzles, beads, pegs, etc. Develop large muscles through outdoor activities such as organized games, climbing and running
- Stimulate and encourage curiosity and provide opportunities for problem solving
- Encourage children to take care of their own needs with support from the adults in their environment
The Learning Garden preschool curriculum utilizes a thematic approach based on children’s interests as means of providing intrinsic motivation for learning. By using a thematic approach, we teach children the way environments and humans interconnect. This process helps children make sense of their world. Books, excellent tools in the learning process, have been incorporated into each thematic unit as a means to introduce early language skills.
Classroom teachers will choose age-appropriate individual and group activities/experiences such as music & movement, dramatic play, mathematics (classification, counting and numerals, matching, measuring, sequencing, sorting), language arts (story predictions, story recall, letter recognition, letter formation), social studies, and interactive learning through exploration in the areas of science, art, and the five senses.
