A Safe and Happy Environment
Our goal is to create an environment that promotes and nurtures your whole child, their mind, body and (spirit), through strategically planned activities targeted to meet your child’s developmental goals. We will strive to expand upon all their abilities and encourage a lifelong foundation to allow your child to thrive in all aspects of life.
Support and Encouragement
Children need nurturing, support, and encouragement, a feeling of belonging, an acceptance of his/her emotions, guidance towards appropriate social skills, interaction with others and a positive self-concept. It is our goal at The Children’s Center to positively encourage your child to grow and develop these skills. Your children should know and feel that their classroom at the Center is part of their home and it will give them a sense of belonging. We have created an environment at the Center filled with love and understanding where our students feel that they belong, they are respected and they are proud of themselves and their family. Our teachers use positive guidance techniques to encourage their growth and development by observation while assessing them and making strategy plans to help each of your children achieve their goals and achieve success in the classroom.
Current Curriculum
The current curriculum is inspired by Maria Montessori’s method, that education should prepare children for all aspects of life using materials and techniques that promote natural growth of learning in all children. Along with the influences of the Reggio Emilia Approach, that focus on the “image of the child” as being strong, competent, inventive, capable, and full of potential and the “one hundred languages of children,” that children use multiple ways to represent their learning as well as the way they learn. The environment is used as a third teacher and is carefully designed to facilitate social construction of understanding and to document the life within its space. Relationships are a vital part and children learn through co-construction of knowledge. Collaboration is important on every level with parents, teachers, students as well as the Missoula community. Documentation is an important aspect in our curriculum, providing verbal and visual traces of students learning experiences, work, reflection, interpretation, and providing opportunities to revisit previous experiences. The Reggio approach values flexibility, active listening, and transparency as important to creating the best learning environment.
As a basis for our curriculum structure, we are incorporating The Project Approach. The Project Approach is where “children have a strong disposition to explore and discover. The Project Approach builds on natural curiosity, enabling children to interact, question, connect, problem-solve, communicate, reflect, and more. This kind of authentic learning extends beyond the classroom to each child’s home, community, nation, and the world. It essentially makes learning the stuff of real life and children active participants in and shapers of their worlds.”
Curriculum Goals
- Cultural diversity and Community – celebrating different cultures within our community with an introduction to Spanish. Exploring and studying the community around us through being actively involved in our community as well as through opportunities to visit our surrounding community members and learn through them.
- The Project Approach – an explorative process through in-depth investigations of topics.
- The Environment as being the Third teacher – providing spaces and activities that inspire children’s creativity, opportunities to expand their learning, encourage collaboration and develop relationships to establish a sense of belonging.
Teaching Method
Our educators implement instructions through explicit and systematic instructions, developed through vigilant observations and assessments to target each child’s learning objectives and developmental goals. Educators work alongside children as co-learners and listeners.
Kindergarten
The main goal of our Preschool Program is to prepare children for Kindergarten. The curriculum and the lessons all focus on this goal. Developmental assessments are done two times during the school year and a child’s progress is charted. Areas of weakness or delays are addressed early in the school year and goals are set with the parents during the initial parent-teacher conference in the fall. Adjustments are made to the curriculum to meet the needs of each child and by the time a child reaches five years of age, he/she should be ready to graduate preschool and go on to Kindergarten. The teachers and Executive Director discuss this progress often throughout the school year and work together with the parents to make sure individual goals for each child are moving along towards completion by the end of the preschool year. After completion of the Center’s programs, your child will most likely be more than ready for school. The Center will make a recommendation on Kindergarten readiness for each child. We always have the best interest of your child in mind.
