Exploring the Learning Tree Schools Curriculum: Nurturing Growth and Environmental Awareness
The Learning Tree Schools curriculum is designed to foster holistic development in children, encompassing socio-emotional, cognitive, and physical growth. Through engaging activities and a focus on hands-on learning, the curriculum aims to prepare children for a bright educational future while instilling a sense of responsibility and environmental stewardship.
Early Learning Foundations: Nursery and Pre-Kindergarten
The Learning Tree recognizes the critical importance of early learning for all children. Through engaging and age-appropriate activities, nursery and Pre-K students learn to socialize and develop essential life and community skills. Finding the right early education can be challenging for parents, but The Learning Tree strives to provide a nurturing and supportive environment for the youngest learners.
Programs for Every Age
The Learning Tree offers programs tailored to specific age groups:
- Sweet Peas, Love Bugs & Busy Bees, Wiggle Worms: Ages 6 weeks to 1 year.
- Wiggle Worms, Love Bugs & Busy Bees: Ages 1 year to 2 years.
- Love Bugs & Busy Bees, Little Sprouts & Leap Frogs: Ages 2 years to 3 years. Potty training will begin in this class.
- Little Sprouts & Leap Frogs, Adventurers & Explorers (VPK): Ages 3 years to 4 years.
- Adventurers & Explorers (VPK): Ages 4 years to 5 years. A free three-hour VPK program is offered, with wraparound programs available.
Additional options include Drop-In Care, After School Care, and Summer/Winter/Spring Camp for elementary school children, available weekly or monthly.
FunShine Express Curriculum
The Learning Tree utilizes the FunShine Express curriculum, which is theme-based and developmentally appropriate for ages 0-5 years. This curriculum provides staff with a guide and ready-to-use lesson plans aligned with early learning standards. By having an at-your-fingertips curriculum, staff can spend more time with the children and save hours of planning time each week. The professionally designed curriculum encompasses all developmental domains, such as language, cognitive, physical, and social skills.
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The Learning Tree believes that children learn best through hands-on experiences within their environment, and the FunShine Express curriculum activities are designed to facilitate this. This curriculum prepares children for a bright educational future, while having fun along the way!
ABCmouse.com Integration
As part of the Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) program, The Learning Tree incorporates ABCmouse.com in addition to the curriculum as a fun tool to learn and play. ABCmouse.com is used on computer stations within the classrooms in small learning groups during daily center rotations. It features hundreds of highly interactive and entertaining learning activities designed to teach specific topics. Under the supervision and assistance of their teacher, children can explore the step-by-step learning path, complete lessons, and engage in independent learning. Each child wears headphones during their session to hear the voiced instructions in each activity. Once a child’s account is created by the teachers, a link is sent to invite the family to create a free ABCmouse.com classroom-linked account.
Fostering Development: Socio-Emotional, Cognitive, and Physical Growth
The Learning Tree focuses on three important developmental learning areas: socio-emotional, cognitive, and physical development.
Socio-Emotional Development
At The Learning Tree, children gain independence and self-control by learning to trust others and by learning the appropriate ways to take initiative while respecting others. Children are also encouraged to make decisions, use reasoning skills, practice listening, explore their environment and express, understand and handle their feelings. The Learning Tree focuses on helping young children enhance self-esteem, exhibit positive attitudes and demonstrate pro-social behavior.
Cognitive Development
Children learn by doing. They learn simple concepts, then build on them to tackle bigger and more complex tasks and ideas. By using their senses, infants and toddlers discover that objects have weight, volume, color and texture. Language development is an important cognitive skill. As infants learn that sounds have meaning, they begin to practice cooing and babbling and producing their own sounds. This leads to being able to understand and respond to words and they begin to name objects. As they grow, toddlers expand their vocabulary by listening to family members, teachers and other children. Preschoolers use words as symbols for people, things, movements, feelings and ideas. They also develop the ability to talk about their observations as they explore the world. At this stage of their early childhood development, young children learn to group and classify things. This includes descriptive classifications like size, color and shape. The ability to classify is a critical thinking skill that allows children to make sense of their experiences and the world around them. The Learning Tree focuses on helping young children acquire learning and problem solving skills, expand logical thinking skills, acquire concepts leading to a fuller understanding of the immediate world, participate in make-believe play, expand verbal communications skills, and develop beginning reading and writing skills.
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Physical Development
Gross motor development includes activities like throwing, catching, skipping, climbing and balancing. The Learning Tree environment provides a safe space, equipment and plenty of time for children to practice new skills. When children string beads, learn to zip, or line up shells, they are refining their eye-hand coordination, their small muscle skills and their sense of direction. The Learning Tree focuses on helping young children enhance their gross and fine motor skills and use all senses in learning.
Project Learning Tree: Integrating Environmental Education
Project Learning Tree (PLT) is an award-winning environmental education program that acts as a “window to the world” to engage children in learning - both inside and outside. Children from preschool through 12th grade benefit from the hands-on learning that helps them excel in reading, writing, math, science and social studies. Students gain awareness of their surroundings. PLT trainings are available in person or online. Project Learning Tree develops quality hands-on lessons that are aligned with state and national academic standards.
PLT uses the forest as a window into the natural world, helping young people gain an awareness and knowledge of the environment and their place within it.
Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide
PLT’s new flagship curriculum, Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide, includes 50 hands-on, multidisciplinary activities to connect children to nature and increase young people’s awareness and knowledge about their environment. Activities include detailed step-by-step instructions, academic correlations, time and material requirements, and corresponding student worksheets with green career connections.
The curriculum covers a wide range of topics, including:
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- Trees and forests
- Wildlife
- Water
- Air
- Energy
- Waste
- Climate change
- Invasive species
- Community planning
Examples of activities include Charting Diversity, Birds and Worms, and Pollution Search. These activities emphasize science, reading, writing, mathematics, and social studies, engaging students in learning both outside and indoors.
Treemendous Science! e-Unit
PLT’s Treemendous Science! e-unit is an invitation to increase the quantity and quality of K-2 learners’ contact with nature and trees.
Energy in Ecosystems e-Unit
With PLT’s Energy in Ecosystems e-unit, students focus on forests (one of the largest and most complex types of ecosystems) and come to understand some of the interactions present in all ecosystems.
Trillions of Trees
Trillions of Trees is a downloadable resource for educators of students in grades 3-5. It invites young learners to investigate the unique characteristics of different tree species and how best to plan, plant, and care for trees in their community.
Nature of Fire
Nature of Fire is a downloadable resource for educators of students in the grades 6-8 that invites students to investigate wildland fire and ecosystem change. This resource integrates core discipline areas, including STEM subjects, reading, writing, and social studies through three hands-on activities.
Teaching with i-Tree
PLT’s Teaching with i-Tree unit, designed for use with middle and high school students, includes three hands-on activities that engage students in discovering and analyzing the many ecosystem services that trees provide.
Energy & Society Kit
Project Learning Tree’s Energy & Society kit offers K-8 students opportunities to learn about their relationship with energy. The activities develop students’ critical thinking skills to help them make decisions about their personal energy use. Students engage in STEM as they investigate their school site, energy use, water, waste and recycling practices.
Connecting to Nature
Nature is a great teacher! Project Learning Tree provides activity ideas to connect children to the outdoors and nature. A printed guide contains a collection of more than 30 fun and easy-to-do activities suitable for children ages 3 - 15. Some activities work better for younger children, while others are more suited for older children.
PLT in South Carolina
In South Carolina, Project Learning Tree is jointly sponsored by the SC Forestry Commission, the Forestry Association of South Carolina and the SC Department of Education. SC PLT EE Centers increase opportunities for PLT professional development events and outreach to impact a larger number of diverse communities. Free educational kits are available at the centers to help increase educator’s implementation of PLT. South Carolina has five PLT Environmental Education Centers located across the state.
The SC PLT Jerry L. Shrum Leadership in Education Award recognizes individuals or organizations who have made positive contributions to advance PLT programs and initiatives at the state or regional level. The award helps bring to light the many accomplishments of PLT’s network in advancing environmental literacy, stewardship and career pathways using trees and forests as windows on the world. It seeks to highlight compelling stories about the impact of PLT on youth, educators, and communities.
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