How Our Children Are Taught
Our teachers use developmentally appropriate practice endorsed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) as the hallmark of high-quality preschool programs. Simply put, teaching is based on each child's age and stage of development. This means that teachers build on what your child already knows and can do. Activities are planned to be challenging, but achievable with a little bit of help. Goals are "just right" for the child. Learning experiences also value and consider each child's family, language, and culture.
We employ multiple settings for learning--teacher-directed large group circle time, small group cooperative work, as well as independent free choice play. Such variety helps youngsters learn how to positively interact with adults and peers and to be self-motivated. This also helps to develop skills of self-regulation, creativity, negotiation, and perseverance which can better prepare a child for success in school as stated in The Every Illinois Child Ready for Kindergarten Initiative.
The ELC makes sure that its play-based curriculum is aligned with the Illinois State Early Childhood Learning Standards, Benchmarks, and Goals and with the Illinois State Kindergarten Individual Development Survey (KIDS) so that our preschoolers are prepared for kindergarten and beyond.
Our goal is to create experiences for children that build on their natural curiosity and foster in them a love of learning that will last a lifetime. Our program includes Bible lessons, language arts, social studies, physical education, science, technology, engineering, arts and crafts, music, imaginative play, creative dramatics, and math.
Here is a sampling of activities used in the areas of foundational spiritual, cognitive, physical, and social-emotional development:
|
Learning Area |
Sampling of Skills Taught |
Sampling of Performance Indicators* |
|
Religion |
God is love; Growing in Christ |
Bible stories; religious art projects; dramatization |
|
Language Arts |
Listening, speaking in full sentences; taking turns speaking; recognizing key ideas in stories |
Story listening, telling and creating; rhyming stories and songs |
|
Social Studies |
Families, people, geography, knowledge of other countries and cultures |
Sharing family life and cultural traditions; schoolwide travel unit/activity |
|
Physical Education |
Fine and large motor skill development, eye-hand coordination; physical control |
Play with manipulative; large motor play daily; games such as Catch and Freeze Dance |
|
Social-Emotional |
Self-regulation; empathy; respect; confidence |
Stories; role-playing; reading facial expressions; challenging students while providing support |
|
STEAM |
||
|
Science |
Hypothesizing, measuring, observing; understanding about the parts and functions of the human body |
Nature walks; life cycle of butterflies; observation of specimens from Field Museum; identifying human body parts and functions; the five senses |
|
Technology |
Precoding through directional and counting games/activities; interactive computer/tablet exploration; interpreting musical sounds |
Games (Chutes and Ladders); following and creating a treasure map; using the Internet for listening to music and animal sounds; discovering countries; digital keyboard |
|
Engineering |
Building; understanding how things work |
Marble Run; block zoos and castles; Lego spaceships; nanobug paths |
|
Arts |
Process art allowing for creativity; variety of methods and media |
Impression paintings using leaves; puffy glue painting; painting with feathers; 3-D projects |
|
Math |
Number sense; categorizing; sets; patterns; geometry; shapes; more or less |
Ordinal counting (1st, 2nd, etc.) while standing in line; categorizing beads; shape games; how many items are missing from a set; dice games |
* View our Slide Show to see children engaged in some of these activities.
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