Each week, for the week ahead, we develop our learning process around topics that children are interested in and will engage with. For example Wildlife. Or Dinosaurs. We develop our social, emotional, early math and language and thought concepts while talking about the chosen theme, and create projects that are then explored in our groups’ classrooms. A couple of weeks ago our Toddler group launched into the solar system. So much to learn and marvel at! And the kids just loved it. So we decided to continue to learn a little more about it this week and this topic “emerged” as a very motivating one for our little ones. Here is our Toddler’s group curriculum for March 20-24, that illustrates our teaching process.
During that week, at our Circle Times, we read books like “Good Night Galaxy”, and “I Love You To The Moon and Back” to develop language skills and literacy. We sang songs like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “I’m An Astronaut” that helped our little bugs with coordination and social-emotional skills development. Some other activities included painting a moon gray , in which our little artists worked on their fine motor skills, learned to follow directions and trained color recognition. Gluing stars on to a piece of paper also helped us to work on shape recognition. And eventually, we used our hand prints to make a bright sun and learned about sensory exploration. All this without ever stopping having fun! This approach to learning/teaching as a harmonious and emergent process does work!
And, just to round things off, our parents look forward to the detailed emails we send for each group explaining what their little ones learned that week. Why should we have all the fun!
