Preschool Curriculum
Explore, Investigate and Create
The curriculum at St. Francis Preschool is based upon the belief that allowing children to explore, investigate, and create is the perfect medium for motivating learning. Because of this closely held value, our curriculum is one that emerges from the daily experiences and interests of the children. Such a curriculum is based on the idea that “everything is developing,” therefore the focus is on the process of learning rather than the product of learning.
On any one day you may see the skeleton of a pirate ship being constructed, or an art exhibition of tornadoes being planned, or freshly picked pumpkins being weighed and measured. Skill development within the areas of social, physical, cognition and literacy grow freely in this fertile ground of play and exploration. While facilitating these experiences, our expert classroom teachers assure that the children are challenged by utilizing open-ended questions to encourage problem solving as well as imagination and creativity. Documentation of progress occurs through photographs and evidence of completed individual and group projects, such as graphs, posters, charts, and art pieces which fill the classrooms and hallways.
To provide a cohesive cognitive experience, we utilize Frameworks© as a foundational system of broad life concepts that evolve with developing experiences. This approach places the activities and exploration that occur in our “emergent” curriculum within a conceptual curricular framework. Such conceptual frameworks:
- allow children to see the relationships between ideas/concepts….rather than presenting ideas/concepts in isolation.
- encourage children to see patterns in information as well as patterns among concepts….rather than managing information in a random manner.
- provide the foundation on which to become critical thinkers and therefore ask critical questions….rather than ask concrete questions based on concrete information, abstract thinking and imagination are engaged.
- encourage higher level questions to engage a child’s imagination in generating and implementing solutions, processes, outcomes, etc….rather than accepting routine answers and paths of thinking.
- engage children to be critical thinkers which is essential to developing active participants and future leaders of a democratic society….rather than accepting directed, rote responses that have not been personally reasoned or fully understood.
- generate a greater perspective and engages an unlimited vision of possibilities thus enhancing future choices….rather than unconsciously following a path and/or making choices from a limited set of information or understanding of the world.
- nurture a child’s imagination, encourage choice-making, as well as views the child as an active participant in the learning process thus fostering intrinsic motivation, all of which set the stage for life-long learning….rather than defaulting to the old learning model of the “empty vessel.”
So how does it feel to join the St. Francis Preschool family and experience this curriculum in partnership with expert teachers who nurture each child’s growth and unique talents? Click here to see what some of our parents had to say on the NAEYC Family Questionnaire.
