Nurturing Growth and Discovery: Exploring the Learning House Preschool Curriculum

The early years of a child's life are a period of incredible growth and development. Recognizing the significance of this stage, Little Scholars Learning House offers a comprehensive preschool curriculum designed to foster a lifelong love of learning. This curriculum extends beyond traditional daycare, providing a physically safe, intellectually stimulating, and emotionally supportive environment for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Infant Curriculum: A Foundation of Sensory Exploration and Movement

The infant curriculum at Little Scholars Learning House focuses on creating a nurturing environment where the youngest learners can explore the world through their senses and develop essential motor skills.

Sensorial Stimulation: Engaging the Senses

For infants, sensorial stimulation is paramount. Before language fully develops, infants primarily experience the world through their senses. The curriculum incorporates activities that stimulate these senses, creating new associations that form the basis for language and vocabulary development. These activities include materials that produce sounds to develop auditory skills, and as eating habits evolve, smell and taste are incorporated with associated language. The goal is to introduce concepts that will be expanded upon in the toddler curriculum.

Movement-Rich Environment: Fostering Brain Development

Recognizing the crucial link between movement and brain development, the curriculum emphasizes creating a movement-rich environment. Infants are encouraged to be active participants in care-giving activities. Activities are designed to support the development of gross motor skills, such as rolling over, creeping, sitting, crawling, and eventually walking, through the use of stairs and platforms, movement mats, pushcarts, and wall bars. Fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination are also developed through activities using mobiles, rattles, objects to grasp, threading, bead-stringing, placing cubes on pegs, puzzles, folding, and other practical life exercises.

Language Development: Constant Exposure and Interaction

Language development is a continuous process for infants. Teachers and staff engage in constant communication with the infants, explaining actions and surroundings to encourage language acquisition. This involves singing songs, listening to nursery rhymes, and experimenting with vocal imitation. Staff are trained to actively listen and "talk" with the infants, fostering communication skills. Language-building materials, such as books, objects, and pictures, are integrated into activities to encourage language-based thinking.

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Early Introduction to Core Concepts

Even at the infant stage, children are introduced to basic concepts in various subjects:

Art: Infants explore their creative side through painting, creating, gluing, working with dough, and other classroom activities.
Science: The natural world is explored through discussions and experiences with weather, seasons, and the life around them.
Math: The concept of numbers is introduced through counting activities.

Sample Infant/Nursery Room Schedule:

The daily schedule provides a structured yet flexible routine:

7:00-8:15: Drop off and Free Play
8:15-8:30: Diaper Change
8:30-8:45: Music
8:45-9:00: Clean Up and Wash Hands
9:00-9:30: Breakfast
9:30-10:15: Sensory/Montessori materials
10:15-10:30: Diaper Change and Clean Up
10:30-11:00: Outside or Gross Motor Play
11:00-11:45: Art
11:45-12:00: Diaper Change and Wash Hands
12:00-12:30: Lunch
12:30-1:00: Diaper Check and Story Time
1:00-3:00: Nap
3:00-3:15: Diaper Change
3:15-3:45: Snack
3:45-4:15: Walk Outside or Gross Motor Play
4:15-5:00: Free Play
5:00-5:15: Diaper Change
5:15-6:00: Free Play and Pick Up

Toddler and Young Preschool Curriculum: Fostering Independence and Exploration

The toddler and young preschool program at Little Scholars Learning House builds upon the foundation laid in infancy, inviting children on a daily adventure in a secure environment. The curriculum is tailored to individual needs, providing opportunities for immersion in practical life skills, motor skills development, sensorial exercises, and language development.

Practical Life Skills: Building Independence and Confidence

Toddlers are encouraged to develop a sense of self and independence through simple, everyday activities such as buttoning, zipping, preparing food, and washing hands. These tasks, when presented as part of the learning process, foster physical independence and confidence, which in turn promotes intellectual exploration and creativity.

Motor Skills: Refining Coordination and Spatial Awareness

Fine motor skills, concentration, and eye-hand coordination are developed through activities like pouring, spooning, and grasping. Children also learn to organize objects spatially. Outdoor playtime and classroom movement exercises promote large motor skills through activities such as jumping, running, dancing, and walking.

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Sensorial Exercises: Expanding Sensory Understanding

Children advance their understanding of touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. This teaches them concepts such as size, shape, and color. Outdoor adventures allow children to explore nature through their senses. Other sensorial exercises include discrimination of weight, smell, taste, temperature, and shape, all contributing to a more robust vocabulary and the ability to distinguish between similar items, laying the groundwork for the preschool curriculum.

Language Development: Building a Rich Vocabulary

The toddler years are marked by a rapid expansion of verbal language. The curriculum supports this development by providing daily conversations and exploring literature through books and finger plays. Pre-reading activities include matching, counting, and understanding the sequence of events. Children also learn to use and read facial expressions.

Early Exposure to Core Components

Toddlers are introduced early and exposed daily to core educational components:

Mathematics: Reciting and identifying numbers, while also understanding that numbers have value.
Science: Science concepts are introduced through weekly topics designed to lay the foundation for scientific exploration. Hands-on activities and discussions promote discovery.
The Arts: Toddlers develop self-expression and a passion for the arts by creating unique projects, singing playful songs, and reciting fun rhymes daily. These musical and artistic experiences teach children to work on creative expression - with process being more important than product.

Sample Schedules:

Toddler Classroom:

7:00-8:00: Arrival/Free time
8:00-8:30: Potty Break
8:30-9:00: Morning Meeting/Circle Time
9:00-9:30: Outside Time
9:30-10:00: Morning Snack
10:00-10:30: Potty Break
10:30-11:00: Centers
11:00-11:30: Music and Movement
11:30-12:00: Potty Break
12:00-12:30: Lunch
12:30-1:00: Story Time
1:00-1:30: Potty Break
1:30-3:30: Nap/Quiet Time
3:30-4:30: Potty Break and Snack
4:30-5:00: Free Time
5:00-5:30: Outside/Gross Motor
5:30-6:00: Clean up

Young Preschool:

7:00-8:00: Arrival/Free time
8:00-8:30: Potty Break
8:30-9:00: Morning Meeting/Circle Time
9:00-9:45: Potty Break and Snack Time
9:45-10:15: Outdoor Time
10:15-11:00: Centers
11:00-11:30: Music and Movement
11:30-12:00: Potty Break
12:00-12:30: Lunch
12:30-1:00: Story Time
1:00-1:30: Potty Break
1:30-3:30: Nap/Quiet Time
3:30-4:15: Potty Break and Snack
4:15-4:15: Outdoor/Gross Motor
5:00-5:45: Free Time
5:45-6:00: Clean up

Preschool Curriculum: Cultivating Lifelong Learners

The Preschool program at Little Scholars Learning House provides a carefully planned, stimulating environment to help children develop the foundational habits, attitudes, skills, and ideas essential for a lifetime of creative thinking and learning. The program is designed to meet the needs of each individual child through a Montessori-inspired philosophy.

Sensorial Exercises: Integrating Knowledge and Building Vocabulary

Sensorial materials help children distinguish, categorize, and relate new information to what they already know. This process is the beginning of conscious knowledge. Sensorial activities at this stage build on what children learned in the infant and toddler phases, integrating the same types of activities into the rest of the curriculum.

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Math: Children are presented with materials like a binomial cube that helps them learn discrimination of color and size and builds a foundation for future understanding of polynomials and volume.
Language Arts: Children are constantly matching concepts such as color and shape to objects to build and grow vocabulary. They also learn to identify consonants and vowels and begin learning to write through color and texture exercises.
Science: Color discrimination is used to help children identify different parts and concepts of individual animals.
Geography: Touch discrimination is used to help children distinguish between water and land, and later colors are used to help children discriminate between continents, then countries.

Practical Life Exercises: Developing Coordination and Focus

Young children like to imitate adults doing ordinary tasks; by doing this, we help children improve their coordination and focus their concentration. They learn to pay attention to detail and develop good work habits.

Physical Geography: Fostering a Love for the World

Large wooden puzzle maps are immensely popular. At first, students use them simply as puzzles. Gradually, children learn names of countries, geographical facts, and common land formations such as islands and peninsulas. By starting with the big picture and then working down to include smaller details, we create a love for the concepts of geography in our students.

Cultural Units: Promoting Understanding and Tolerance

Little Scholars Learning House allows children to gain an awareness of the world around them by exploring countries, customs, food, music, climate, language, and animals. The mission with cultural units is to help students develop understanding, tolerance, and compassion for all people.

Arts: Encouraging Creativity and Self-Expression

Art feeds a great joy children find in creating. At Little Scholars Learning House, children use their imaginations with a variety of mediums, learning that the process is more important than the end-product.

Science and Nature: Stimulating Curiosity and Appreciation

Science stimulates curiosity through discovery projects and experiments, helping children to draw their own conclusions. Students strive to:

Study the plant and animal kingdoms
Develop a love and appreciation for all living things
Use sensorial exercises focusing on color, touch, and auditory discrimination to better understand the living world around them.

Preschool Age Schedule:

8:50-9:00: Drop off/car line begins
9:00-9:15: Morning greeting/circle time
9:15-10:00: Work time
10:00-10:15: Snack time
10:15-11:15: Work time
11:15-11:45: Outside time
11:45-11:55: Closing circle
11:55-12:00: Pick Up Line Outside Doors

Remainder of day for other preschool age children:

12:00-1:00: Lunch/Outside time
1:00-3:00: Rest Time/Quiet time
3:00-4:00: Snack and Outside time
4:00-6:00: Learning centers: Children can explore and play in the centers.

Learning House Preschool: Equipping Children for Life

Learning House Preschool's curriculum is geared to help four to six-year-olds develop a strong foundation for learning. Activities such as colorful artwork, music, and movement, science activities, imaginative play, sensorial and practical life are designed to promote a child's cognitive, social, and physical development.

This curriculum will help develop confidence in themselves and better prepare them for a lifetime of learning. Learning House Preschool offers half-day and full-day programs.

Stay Connected with the Brightwheel App

Little Scholars Learning House utilizes the Brightwheel app to keep parents informed and engaged in their child's learning journey.

Daily updates: Receive a real-time feed of activities throughout the day.
Photos: Watch your child’s day unfold with snapshots delivered to your mobile device.
Stay connected: Stay in touch with your teacher and strengthen school learning with activities at home.
Digital check-in: Easy digital check-in with personal passcodes. Add approved adults to pick up your child, and see when your child is checked in or out.
Paperless billing: Digital payments directly from your bank account or credit/debit card.

Learning House Preschool Administration

The Learning House Preschool is led by a dedicated administration team across its three locations in Dartmouth and Fairhaven:

Christine Patacao: Founder and Owner of Learning House Preschool.
Meghan Bedgio: Executive Director of Learning House Preschool.
Jessica Garcia: Director (Dartmouth Gulf Rd location).
Katelyn Rose: Director (Dartmouth Slocum Rd location).
Patience Murphy: Director (Fairhaven location).

Our Purpose

Our purpose at Learning House Preschool is to provide high-quality childcare for children and their families. We believe that children learn best through interactions between children and their families. Our programs are designed to allow the children to choose their own activities and explore their interests to be actively involved in their own learning process. Our goal is to provide an environment where the children can reach their full potential. Our programs provide for all areas in a child's development, which include social, emotional, physical, and cognitive.

Let Them Be Little Preschool Curriculum

Let Them Be Little Preschool is a gentle and play-based, 36-week curriculum for the early years of learning. Each day you will enjoy circle time together, you will read aloud, play with letters and numbers, and work on a new life skill. Let Them Be Little Preschool is simple enough for you to modify for your specific learner and easy enough to incorporate into your busy life. You can print at home or use our partner, Humble Heart Press, for printing. Receive 10% off your entire printing order with Humble Heart Press when you use code LITTLEHOUSE10 at checkout.

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