Preschoolers
Preschool provides an environment that enables each child to become personally and socially competent, be an effective learner, develop physical and motor skills while feeling safe and happy.
Saint Andrew's Children's Center uses a modified High/Scope Curriculum approach to develop the daily lesson plans for each classroom.
High/Scope’s central principles and guidelines are summarized in what is called a “Wheel of Learning”. This wheel’s center core is called “Active Learning”. Around the core, the wheel is divided into four quadrants- Daily Routine, Assessment, Adult-child interaction, and the Learning environment.
Active Learning is the center of the curriculum. Children are acting directly on objects and interacting with people, ideas, and events. In turn, children construct their own understanding of the world around them. Children are encouraged to follow their own initiative to:
- Explore
- Engage in experiences that are of personal interest
- Ask and answer questions
- Set their own goals
- Solve problems
- Generate new ideas
The children’s key experiences- activities that present important learning opportunities are categorized into ten key areas of development:
- Creative representation
- Language and literacy
- Initiative and social relations
- Movement
- Music
- Classification
- Seriation
- Number
- Space
- Time
Adult-child Interaction - The way adults interact with children is a key component of the High/Scope approach because it impacts how comfortable children feel with initiating their own ideas.
Learning Environment - Both the indoor and outdoor settings offer children a wide range of materials that can be manipulated and combined in many different ways—ways that make sense to children and enable them to pursue their own interests. The play space is divided into several interest areas centered around specific types of play—for example, a block area, house area, toy area, art area, and book area.
Assessment - When adults are closely involved in children’s play and activities and make a daily practice of observing them, they learn a great deal about each child’s interests and abilities. We use the State of California- Desired Result Developmental Profile-R as our tool to report your child’s accomplishments. Parent conferences are held twice each year for each child. In addition, Parents and Teachers can arrange additional conferences to discuss any particular issues that may arise.
Daily Routine - The High/Scope daily routine offers children the consistency of a predictable yet flexible sequence of events. The routine is mad up of several components: a plan-do-review sequence, small and large group times, outside time, transition times, and time for eating and resting. These provide children a range of active learning experiences and a balance between adult- and child- initiated activities.
As parents please log into the www.highscope.org website to learn more about the research that lead to the development of the High/Scope curriculum. There are many resources to help you understand the basis for this curriculum method.
Additional weekly activities include:
- Cooking
- Carpentry
- Gardening
- Music
- Fitness