Our program embraces The Creative Curriculum, which identifies goals in all areas of development, including Social, Emotional, Cognitive and Physical. If you have not received a Parent's Guide to the Creative Curriculum, you can obtain one in the office. The Creative Curriculum follows principles of Developmentally Appropriate Practice, the National Association for the Education Curricula (Birth to Five years).
Our program also embraces The Pennsylvania Learning Standards for Early Education. The Pennsylvania Learning Standards for Early Childhood are designed as a framework for our teachers to provide quality services in pre kindergarten programs and to provide guidance about what children should know or be able to do when they enter kindergarten. The standards are inclusive of all children. We believe that play is the vehicle through which children build knowledge. All children need opportunities to develop new skills by using active exploration of hands – on materials. They need safe & comfortable environments where they can practice these newly acquired skills and build on them to learn new information. Key learning areas that we will be focusing on are specific areas of development that, when combined, represent the whole child. These include, approaches to learning, creative arts, language and literacy, logical mathematics, personal social, physical and health, program partnerships and science and social studies.
You will be happy to know that our program is a member of NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children), DVAEYC (Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children), and Pennsylvania's Keystone Stars initiative. (* Keystone STARS is a continuous quality improvement initiative for early learning programs.) *Creative Curriculum, Diane Trister Dodge and Joanna Phinney, Teaching Strategies Inc., 1990 · Pennsylvania Department of Education and Department of Public Welfare, 2007