Curriculum

Social emotional development is the core of early care and education because it sets a firm foundation on which all other learning will take place. 

Children’s emotional development is built into the architecture of their brains. Relationships that provide social, emotional, and physical security promote and enhance a child’s ability to learn and thrive. To grow socially and emotionally, children need to develop an increasing capacity to experience, express, and gain self-control over their emotions and social interactions. 

This development is enhanced by nurturing relationships and positive early learning experiences. A consistent, predictable, and engaging environment strengthens a child’s confidence in approaching new challenges, interacting with others, and exploring their environment. Established social-emotional skills have a significant, positive impact on a child’s learning, particularly in cognitive development. It sets the foundation for life-long success. 

Approaches to learning refers to behaviors that indicate ways children become engaged in social interactions and learning experiences. 

Approaches to learning contribute to their success in school and influence their development and learning in other domains. For example, curiosity is a prerequisite of exploration, and reasoning and problem solving are as necessary for social relationships as they are for mathematics. A child’s ability to stay focused, interested, and engaged in activities supports a range of positive outcomes, including cognitive, language, and social and emotional development. Many early learning experts view approaches to learning as one of the most important domains of early childhood development. When children have a positive experience in learning, they are likely to want to learn more.

Environments rich with print, language, storytelling, books, digital tools, and writing materials allow children to experience the joy and power associated with reading and writing, while mastering basic concepts of print. 

Children learn language BEST when they are actively engaged in meaningful and purposeful interactions. Daily exposure to verbal and written language provides young children with the opportunities to begin acquiring understanding of the concepts of early literacy and its functions. Through play and intentional activities, children learn to create meaning from language and communicate with others using verbal and non-verbal language, pictures, symbols, and print. 

The preschool environment is respectful and supportive of children’s cultural heritages and home languages while encouraging English language acquisition. The ability to listen, speak, read, and write emerge interdependently in environments designed to meet each child’s unique skills, abilities, interests, and needs.

Mathematics is a way of thinking, knowing, problem-solving, and reasoning that is accessible to all children regardless of their prior knowledge and experiences. 

Mathematical knowledge, interests, and skills are basic to children’s success in school and later life. From a very early age, mathematics helps children to connect ideas, develop logical thinking, question, analyze, and understand the world around them. Through their senses, children embrace mathematics as an integral part of their world. Children thrive in environments that promote thinking and curiosity, are rich in mathematical language, and nurture their natural drive to explore and experiment with numbers, shapes, measurement, and patterns. 

Children are capable of complex scientific thinking and approaches to investigating the world, developing new ideas, collaborating with others, solving problems, constructing theories, and exploring with abundant curiosity.

Science, for young children and their caregivers, is an active and open-ended search to construct new knowledge. Children ask questions and seek answers to understand the world around them and learn by being actively engaged with experiences, real objects and natural, relevant phenomena. As children seek answers, they will plan, observe, predict, and form conclusions. Children’s observations, predictions, explanations, and conclusions can lead to meaningful opportunities to develop skills, knowledge, and relationships.

Social Studies is the study of the complex and intertwined relationships between people, their environment, and their needs. 

The inclusion of Social Studies in early childhood environments is important to nurture children’s understanding of themselves and others. Social Studies is about interdependence. At a young age, children begin to develop their social identity and think about their place in the social world. As children grow, they develop an increased awareness of their personal histories and heritage, and a sense of time and place. Through everyday interactions with children and adults, they develop an appreciation for rights and responsibility within a group, and how social rules help people in promoting safety and fairness.

Children deserve environments that are safe and encourage healthy living. 

Children develop skills necessary for future social and academic success as they explore, combine, and refine their physical movements. At Caterpillar Lane, movement experiences with vigorous outdoor and indoor activities are part of the daily schedule. Healthy living practices are modeled, and children are taught the importance of safe behavior, good hygiene, a healthy diet, and the need for physical activity and rest.