Curriculum for Young Children

When you hear the word "curriculum" you probably think of something like a high school or college syllabus: a plan for a specific subject describing what should be learned and how. For elementary school students many of us probably think of the Common Core standards, which outline how students should learn math and language arts from Kindergarten through eighth grade. But a young child (infant to age 5, for our purposes) is very different from, say, a sixth grader in terms of how she is growing and developing in all domains: cognitive, social emotional, language and literacy, and physical. An infant will not sit and repeat the alphabet after you because it wouldn't make any sense for his stage of literacy and cognitive development (though he will listen curiously and eventually join in if you sing it as a song!). Our job as teachers is to facilitate an environment, relationships, and activities that support learning appropriate to our children's developmental stage, so our curriculum is quite different from the way a teacher of older children would plan for their learning.

Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are just about always determined to learn something, and their main mode for learning is play. The highest-quality curricula for young children recognize this innate drive and offer ways to extend what the children are learning, with an eye towards the foundations of social, emotional, language and literacy, and math and science skills. We are less concerned with the ABC's and the 123's and more focused on developing the dispositions, attitudes, and social emotional skills that will make children successful learners. I found a list of characteristics that are "The Foundation for All Learning" in The Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers and Twos (Dodge, Rudick, and Berke, 2006); this book is the curricular foundation behind our observation, documentation, and planning tool, Teaching Strategies GOLD. Here are the characteristics that we are always working to support:

Confidence: a sense of control over one's own behavior and environment; the expectation that you will succeed or you can get help if you need it
Curiosity: a desire to learn, investigate, and discover new things, with the expectation that the process will be enjoyable
Intentionality: a sense of purpose and a drive to make things happen, which often looks like persistence, focus, and creative problem solving
Self-control: a child's ability to control their actions in ways that are age-appropriate
Relatedness: a sense of belonging; the ability to engage with others, knowing that you will be understood, which starts with trust and secure attachment relationships
Capacity to communicate: the desire and ability to exchange ideas, feelings, and thoughts with others; both being able to express yourself and understand others
Cooperativeness: the ability to engage with others and work together on an activity or task; being able to balance your own needs with those of others in order to accomplish something

Obviously these characteristics will look very different in an infant than they will in a five-year-old, but as teachers our background in developmentally appropriate practice helps us recognize and support them all the way through. Next week I'll write more about what the term "emergent curriculum" means and what the planning process looks like for some of our MVS teachers.

Thanks for reading!
Megan

News and Reminders
We will be closed this Thursday and Friday, August 9th and 10th, for teacher in-service.

The next Parent Collaboration Committee meeting will be on Thursday, August 16th at 6pm. With gratitude we've bid farewell to several members whose children have graduated, and we'd love to see some new faces. Come join us!

This Monday, August 6th is a big transition day for the infant/toddler classrooms. We have a few groups of children who are moving up to their next classrooms, and this year we decided to move some teachers with the children for the sake of continuity of care– an important piece of high-quality infant/toddler early education. Going forward the full-time teachers will be Stef and Dana in Infant I; Megan, Carly, and Sadie in Infant II; and Hannah and Amanda in Toddlers. We are all excited for this change, and please let us know if you have any questions.

Kitchen Update
This week chefs Norm and Kaitlyn cooked up a delicious spiced brown rice dish with avocado and roasted chick peas, cheesy flatbread with summer squash, and whole wheat penne pasta with a spinach tomato sauce. We also tried out a new recipe of "spinach nuggets" they were made with chick peas, spinach, and egg they turned out quite delicious. The infants also enjoyed kitchen-made carrot muffins and oat bars for snacks, as well as hummus with red peppers and pita, Havarti cheese, sweet plums, and juicy clementines.

Classroom Updates
Infant I by Stef and Dana
This week we welcomed our new youngest classmate, SH! We are so happy for her to join us, and all of the children were very warm and welcoming towards her. We had yet another very active week. Inside the climber seems to be the focus of the movers and shakers. The children have been crawling around the climber laughing and chasing each other, finding spots to play peek-a-boo. Outside we filled the pool with colorful glitter water. It was a hit! Two of the children sat together splashing water back and forth. We also spent lots of time in the pool with balls and pine needles. The children have been very interested in reading books, singing songs and finger plays, and doing puzzles, too–good exercise for those fine motor skills. Thank you all for a wonderful week!

From Megan– Friday was my last day in Infant I. I am so grateful to have been able to care for our youngest infants for the last two years, and I will miss them very much. They taught me something every day, not least of which is how caring, loving, and strong we all are from the very beginning. I'm excited to see how the class will evolve with Stef and Dana leading the way, and look forward to a new adventure in Infant II!

Infant II by Amanda and Hannah
This week our sensory activities were focused on different ice shapes. Some even had color. The children seemed to enjoy touching them with their hands and eating them, of course! Thursday we filled up the small pool with water and then added color and glitter, which the children loved. We talked a lot about the color of the water and noticed how the grass was full of glitter after we dumped the water out. Friday was our last day in Infant II and we will be moving to the Toddler room on Monday. We are excited to move with our older children but we'll miss the younger ones dearly!

Toddlers by Carly
We had an energetic week filled with lots of toilet training, water play and digging in the dirt and mud to discover many interesting items buried in our mud hill. The children have been hard at work building bridges and moats in the mud hill and are really starting to work collaboratively in a group context when constructing together. We often heard children sharing ideas with each other this week. On Wednesday, BL brought in beautiful Hawaiian tattoos that the children loved! We made up a fun signing and counting game as we applied the tattoos; they children were so happy. Thanks for thinking of us, B! We rounded out the week by getting ready for the teacher and child transitions starting next week. Sadie and I will be looping back to Infant II and we are looking forward to still seeing our Toddler children outside on the playground.

Preschool I by Shannon E.-F.
We've had another unusual week–this time Shannon T. was out traveling for some very well deserved rest. Shannon E.-F. and Alex reintroduced puzzles, but interests shifted more towards block play. We spent each morning in the block area supporting necessary communication and social skills for sharing and building cooperatively, as well as offering more vocabulary related to buildings: windows, roofs, doors, stairs, and furniture.
We've also been interested in the book Flips and Flops, a story about two penguin brothers and their special game, "Boomba!" This is a great story that explores friendships, asking new friends to play, and introducing new friends to established ones. We also tried playing "boomba" ourselves in the sand box, along with waddling and shuffling like penguins!

Preschool II
We spent this week playing a lot of soccer, splashing around in the stream, exploring new areas of the Woof Trail, recognizing letters and spelling, and observing our daisy rainbow. We also enjoyed trying out different dress-up clothing in our classroom. The dramatic play from the children has been quite elaborate with many different roles and ongoing stories that stay with us throughout the day. Singing has also been a very popular activity with spontaneous songs from the Sound of Music popping up while cleaning up, transitioning, or putting on concerts on the playground for other children. We ended the week with a walk to the Elementary School. Some children continued on to Sunset Rock with Maddie while others remained at the playground and then headed back to school. We are all working hard on safety rules for taking walks. We practiced a lot this week and will continue next week as well.