The ScuttleBugs Curriculum is founded on the law of nature: As with DNA, every child is a unique little being with individual experiences, set of skills, base of knowledge and potential for learning and growing. To see a child start to bloom is one of life’s joys. And the strongest blossoms benefit from confidence that is inspired by establishing solid foundations . Our teachers understand each distinctive child intimately, and have the skills and experience to help empower the individual child to foster confidence, cultivate skills and promote knowledge.

We provide an interactive, positive, safe and healthy environment where children are highly motivated, inspired and free to explore their own potential, experiences and knowledge at their own pace while in a team environment. Additionally, we approach each child, their learning style and development paths, holistically. This means firstly that we acknowledge children as multi-dimensional beings, with both conscious and unconscious aspects. Our holistic approach allows for physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development to occur concurrently and continually. It involves children exploring and discovering as a way of learning and creating knowledge through becoming highly engaged and actively involved in their own learning and development.

Our teachers work with children’s innate curiosity, desire to question, explore and discover and sow the seeds for a lifelong desire to learn and create. Equally important in our rounded approach is to connect the children’s development with their natural environment,  building strong relationships through active learning and social activities. 

• Each child is a protagonist promoter, collaborator, and communicator
• The teacher is considered a co-learner and collaborator (not just an instructor)
• The environment is considered as a "third teacher"
• Parents are viewed as partners, collaborators and advocates for their children.

The guiding principles are:

• Children must have some control over the direction of their learning
• Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, tasting, moving, listening, and observing
• Children must be able to explore their relationship with others (children, adults, animals) and with material items in their world. Cooperation is fundamental
• As life-long learners ourselves, we capitalize on the team's collective experience and studies, ultimately supporting our whole-child approach.

To bring this all together in a comprehensive framework where specific academics can be taught and assessed, we break down each day into 15-minute teaching ‘opportunities’, each with specific focus. This frees the teachers to listen to the children under their care, and define the best way to teach.

One fundamental principal we follow is that nothing is achieved unless it’s measured. This is the premise of our whole framework, and ties tightly back to the Reggio approach with the need for documentation. Each 15-minute teaching opportunity is interlinked with the broader weekly, monthly and yearly goals, and each opportunity is assessed as a whole; from the child’s perspective, from the teacher’s perspective, and more generally as a feedback mechanism to assess the curriculum as a whole and provide data to modify and enhance the curriculum moving forward.

The ScuttleBugs framework leads to a ‘living curriculum’, constantly adapting to the children, their interests, the environment, the teachers, and new methods – all the while being actively assessed on its overall performance. All this leads to a far more quantitative assessment of how each child is performing and progressing.

We believe clear consistent communication with parents is key for both educational and personal reasons. This period is so important and these memories so precious in the life of the child. Our Directors and teachers talk to parents every day. We communicate with pictures and daily and weekly updates. At formal assessments every 6 months, teachers and parents review the previous assessment report, highlight the child’s progress, strengths, weaknesses and goals for the following 6 months.