What we do and why we do it ...
In our fast-paced world of ramped-up academic pressure, standardized tests often dictate curriculum and parents and teachers push children at younger and younger ages to perform cognitive tasks once reserved for their older peers. Research shows that this race away from play and towards direct teaching at early ages can leave children less likely to discover new information and create original solutions. Play is disappearing from kindergarten and even from some preschools, yet it remains critical for children's social, emotional and intellectual development.
At Children of the World, we recognize that play is the work of children, and we provide opportunities for both child-directed play and guided activities. Honoring children's need to gain autonomy and explore the world through their bodies and imaginations, and through relationships with others, we seek each day to enable children to enter into deep play. Ours is a space of safety, love, joy, and learning through the wonder of discovery. Our focus on children’s social/emotional development overrides all activities. We provide opportunities for children to work and play together, to develop skills for resolving conflicts, to work as cooperative team members, to offer compassionate care of each other, and to develop the language skills necessary for expressing needs and desires. Throughout the day we encourage children to become independent as they take care of their personal needs, including dressing, hand washing, toileting, cleaning up, and more. Curriculum: Our project-based curriculum is emergent, growing out of the interests of the children as well as the developmental motifs sparking those interests. We strive to go deeply into a topic, enabling children to stretch the boundaries of their knowledge and imaginations, and to spark immersion in new ideas and joy in pretend play. We have built the intercontinental railroad and celebrated when east and west met; measured out the height of a T-Rex and run its length; and trained for and participated in the COTW Olympics. When camping captivated the children, we pitched our tent in the backyard and hoisted food up the branch of a tree to keep it from bears. We have traveled on the space shuttle and become airline pilots; patched the wounds of our dolls and stuffed animals; and created a bakery and invited parents to sample our wares. Children often experience deep connection with our themes, continuing curriculum-related play at the park and at other times during the day. |
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Art: Daily art projects are open-ended and process-oriented rather than driven by the end product. Children have opportunities to “mess around with” various kinds of paint and brushes, with different drawing utensils and types of paper, with collage, clay and other three-dimensional media. When they are ready, we also encourage children to produce representational drawings so they can begin to use art for the purpose of representing their world, telling stories and testing out theories.
Building: Children always have access to building materials, including wooden unit blocks, LEGO’s and other interlocking and wooden blocks. We encourage them to use blocks to further current interests (building spaceships, for example, or roads or bridges), to test limits of length and height, and to use building materials in the service of dramatic play (creating houses for dolls or animals, for example).
Dramatic Play: Children can use always-available dramatic play materials (dolls, dress-up clothes, play kitchen and kitchen materials), as well as ever-changing props, from doctor equipment to castles made from refrigerator boxes to aviation maps and a pretend airplane dashboard. We also provide open-ended dramatic play materials, the use of which is only limited by the children’s imaginations, such as scarves that can be used as table cloths, wrapped around an arm to make a splint, or tied to make a super-hero cape.
Sensory Play: Weekly or bi-weekly, we rotate the sensory materials available to the children. These include but are not limited to rice, sand, water, “goop,” playdough, clay, cornstarch, flour, soil, ice and shredded paper. Sensory play helps children calm themselves and focus, and they explore and discover the properties of different materials. Play at the sensory table sparks questions such as “What floats and what doesn’t?” “What happens when I put the sand in a funnel?” “How long does it take the ice to melt?” “How far can I pull the goop before it breaks?”
Pre-literacy: We encourage children to tell stories, which we type at the computer then email home. Story-telling allows children to be heard, to express themselves and begin to develop (when they’re ready) a sense of the beginning, middle and end of a story. Children also always have access to wonderful books (some always here and some changing), which they can “read” to themselves or ask a teacher to read to them. During dramatic play, emerging writers make signs or other words that move the play along. We also tell stories and act them out. In addition, children can access their own private journals whenever they choose, to draw or write in, or dictate to a teacher the words they would like to write.
We provide daily opportunities for age-appropriate, no-pressure activities designed to encourage the development of phonemic awareness, the basic building-block for reading. These activities include, among other things, rhyming and match-the-sound games and songs.
Manipulatives: Children have the opportunity to develop cognitive and fine motor skills with puzzles (wooden and large-jigsaw cardboard), pegs, train tracks and magnetic-connecting trains, interlocking blocks, sewing cards, scissors, gears and other manipulatives.
Science: We encourage children to “bring the outside in.” We have bug boxes and magnifying glasses available for their use and often use the sensory table to hold outdoor treasures such as leaves. We even put potting soil in the sensory table occasionally and add worms that the children can dig up. We also use the projector to explore light and shadow. Science is part of almost every curriculum unit.
Music: We incorporate music into many parts of our day, singing at morning circle, before lunch, on walks to the park, and at many other times. We also listen and dance to recorded music from around the world. Best of all, our fabulous musician, Alastair Moock, (moockmusic.com), joins us every other week to provide a music education class.
Morning Circle/Snack: At circle time we sing our good-morning song and often other songs and finger-plays. We do word and rhyming games, and sometimes discuss issues that need addressing, where the children develop solutions to problems such as grabbing toys or everyone wanting to be first. Puppets often help with this problem-solving. Then children wash hands and sit at the table for morning snack. Our snack usually consists of a cracker (no transfats or preservatives) and an organic fruit. For children who stay for the full day, we also provide an afternoon snack, usually a cracker and a form of protein (cheese, hummus, yogurt).
Outside time: Every morning, we walk to one of the local parks, use the Tufts campus as a natural playground, or use our small but lovely backyard, which includes sand pits, a custom-designed playhouse, a bamboo "hiding place" and a large shade tree. Outside time consists mainly of child-generated play, but we also include at least one directed activity or outside game such as “Mother May I?”
We go outside in most weather conditions. Only electrical storms, heavy rain, snow or wind, or bitterly cold temperatures will keep us indoors. When inclement weather keeps us inside, we dance, stretch, create obstacle courses and otherwise move our bodies.
Afternoons: Some children go home after lunch while others stay for the afternoon, which includes time for free play, nap or quiet time, snack, and late afternoon outdoor play in the backyard during the spring, summer and fall (and dancing, stories, writing/drawing or playing indoor games during the winter).
Building: Children always have access to building materials, including wooden unit blocks, LEGO’s and other interlocking and wooden blocks. We encourage them to use blocks to further current interests (building spaceships, for example, or roads or bridges), to test limits of length and height, and to use building materials in the service of dramatic play (creating houses for dolls or animals, for example).
Dramatic Play: Children can use always-available dramatic play materials (dolls, dress-up clothes, play kitchen and kitchen materials), as well as ever-changing props, from doctor equipment to castles made from refrigerator boxes to aviation maps and a pretend airplane dashboard. We also provide open-ended dramatic play materials, the use of which is only limited by the children’s imaginations, such as scarves that can be used as table cloths, wrapped around an arm to make a splint, or tied to make a super-hero cape.
Sensory Play: Weekly or bi-weekly, we rotate the sensory materials available to the children. These include but are not limited to rice, sand, water, “goop,” playdough, clay, cornstarch, flour, soil, ice and shredded paper. Sensory play helps children calm themselves and focus, and they explore and discover the properties of different materials. Play at the sensory table sparks questions such as “What floats and what doesn’t?” “What happens when I put the sand in a funnel?” “How long does it take the ice to melt?” “How far can I pull the goop before it breaks?”
Pre-literacy: We encourage children to tell stories, which we type at the computer then email home. Story-telling allows children to be heard, to express themselves and begin to develop (when they’re ready) a sense of the beginning, middle and end of a story. Children also always have access to wonderful books (some always here and some changing), which they can “read” to themselves or ask a teacher to read to them. During dramatic play, emerging writers make signs or other words that move the play along. We also tell stories and act them out. In addition, children can access their own private journals whenever they choose, to draw or write in, or dictate to a teacher the words they would like to write.
We provide daily opportunities for age-appropriate, no-pressure activities designed to encourage the development of phonemic awareness, the basic building-block for reading. These activities include, among other things, rhyming and match-the-sound games and songs.
Manipulatives: Children have the opportunity to develop cognitive and fine motor skills with puzzles (wooden and large-jigsaw cardboard), pegs, train tracks and magnetic-connecting trains, interlocking blocks, sewing cards, scissors, gears and other manipulatives.
Science: We encourage children to “bring the outside in.” We have bug boxes and magnifying glasses available for their use and often use the sensory table to hold outdoor treasures such as leaves. We even put potting soil in the sensory table occasionally and add worms that the children can dig up. We also use the projector to explore light and shadow. Science is part of almost every curriculum unit.
Music: We incorporate music into many parts of our day, singing at morning circle, before lunch, on walks to the park, and at many other times. We also listen and dance to recorded music from around the world. Best of all, our fabulous musician, Alastair Moock, (moockmusic.com), joins us every other week to provide a music education class.
Morning Circle/Snack: At circle time we sing our good-morning song and often other songs and finger-plays. We do word and rhyming games, and sometimes discuss issues that need addressing, where the children develop solutions to problems such as grabbing toys or everyone wanting to be first. Puppets often help with this problem-solving. Then children wash hands and sit at the table for morning snack. Our snack usually consists of a cracker (no transfats or preservatives) and an organic fruit. For children who stay for the full day, we also provide an afternoon snack, usually a cracker and a form of protein (cheese, hummus, yogurt).
Outside time: Every morning, we walk to one of the local parks, use the Tufts campus as a natural playground, or use our small but lovely backyard, which includes sand pits, a custom-designed playhouse, a bamboo "hiding place" and a large shade tree. Outside time consists mainly of child-generated play, but we also include at least one directed activity or outside game such as “Mother May I?”
We go outside in most weather conditions. Only electrical storms, heavy rain, snow or wind, or bitterly cold temperatures will keep us indoors. When inclement weather keeps us inside, we dance, stretch, create obstacle courses and otherwise move our bodies.
Afternoons: Some children go home after lunch while others stay for the afternoon, which includes time for free play, nap or quiet time, snack, and late afternoon outdoor play in the backyard during the spring, summer and fall (and dancing, stories, writing/drawing or playing indoor games during the winter).