Curriculum

At last, a curriculum that capitalizes on your child's natural curiosity for learning while teaching them necessary skills.

Statistics show that the experiences your child gets in their first five years of life can influence how successful they are as adults.

Children love to explore new things. They have a natural curiosity that helps them make sense out of their world one little thing at a time. Our curriculum takes advantage of this natural curiosity and builds on this natural curiosity to teach important lessons. Lessons the children can take through the rest of their education.

Taking advantage of natural curiosity - A Fish Story

There is one little girl who attends York Enrichment Childcare Centre, who was making sense out of her world and I'd like to tell you about her and her clever teacher. She loved fish. Every morning after her mom dropped her off she had to feed the fish in the fish tank. The other children in the class soon caught on and each morning all of them would feed the fish.

But instead of my story ending there, the very clever teacher comes in. The teacher recognized the group's interest in fish and used that to teach the students about all sorts of wonderful things. She read fish picture books, did fish puzzles, they painted fish and created a big fish mural for the wall, they counted fish, they sang fish songs and they even 'built' a boat that sailed the seven seas! These are just a few of the fishy activities that they did over the course of two weeks.

But what did the children actually learn? - A Fish Story analyzed

That one little girl's interest in feeding the fish opened up an exciting underwater adventure that included learning in all the major areas of development:

• Literacy - the picture books and the songs they sang and displaying different fish related words promoted language acquisition.
• Math - the counting of fish and comparing and drawing different sizes and shapes of fish helped to develop rudimentary math concepts.
• Science - observing, feeding, and taking care of a live fish taught the children many different science concepts.
• Arts - painting fish, making aquariums out of found materials, and singing songs, acting as sailors on the sea, and dancing furthered their understanding of the arts and reinforced the concepts learned in all the other areas of development.
• Gross-motor - dancing like how fish swim. Climbing and 'sailing' in the boat. All of these activities require the use of large muscle groups in the legs and body.
• Fine-motor - painting, puzzles, cookie rolling and shaping and arts activities are excellent activities for developing dexterity that is helpful for handwriting later on.

What is Emergent Curriculum?

You can give your child the tools of success by accessing the talents and care of the staff at York Enrichment Childcare Centre. What I described above was an example of what we do everyday. It is called the Emergent Curriculum. Another name for it is child-centred learning. According to Dr. Hilary Jo Seitz, PhD, Emergent Curriculum "is a process of learning about what a child or a class is interested in and then planning a positive authentic learning experience around and beyond that interest." Emergent Curriculum means that subjects for studying emerge from children's interests.

Planning activities around the children's interests keeps them wanting to learn more. She goes on to say that, "In Emergent Curriculum..the child has various motivations for learning." When children are motivated to learn, they learn so much more than when they are not really interested and are forced to learn something. The children learn through hands on experiences in which they discover how things work and explore new concepts. Teachers interact with the children in meaningful ways to direct the learning experiences.

What's the difference between Emergent Curriculum and Learning the old way?

The major difference is that kids learn more and develop stronger memories about the information. These memories stay with them throughout their education even if they can't recall the way they learned something, they will remember the information. An example: Learning to count can be pretty boring and difficult, but if it is exciting to see how many red fish there are in the tank, then the child is learning to count while being totally engaged in the activities. It is almost like the child is learning without realizing it. It works so much better than the old ways that include flash cards and teacher driven themes where the child may have no interest or no connection to the information being taught. The strong memories created around this counting activity allow children to learn about numbers as they are using the numbers. Whereas flashcards make children learn about numbers but not how to use numbers.

The Benefits of Emergent Curriculum

The major benefits of the emergent curriculum are that there is deeper and more meaningful learning because the child is choosing the theme, but the teacher guides the learning to include all of the important areas of development. This affects your child in many positive learning ways. The Emergent Curriculum:

• Increases your child's sense of ownership over their learning. - If a child feels she is in charge, statistics show she tends to learn more and remember more.
• Increases your child's responsibility and initiative for learning - Your child will start seeking out new things to learn and build on the information already learned.
• Increases relevance and meaning of the curriculum - Making information mean something to kids is the goal of educators everywhere. The emergent curriculum not only makes information meaninful, it makes the information fun to learn. They have to learn this stuff, why not make it fun and easy?
• Increases potential for complex learning and thinking - To the wonderment of parents and teachers, children will often make other unexpected connections with other topics outside of the theme.

The Emergent Curriculum starts your child's education in the right direction

We all want to give our children more than we had. In today's competitive society, now more than ever, it is important to do everything we can to start our child's education in the right direction. The first five years are the years when the brain is growing the most and when it is the most open to new information. Just like our little fish lover above, children are natural learners; they want to learn new things all the time. It is important that we as parents and educators build on the learning opportunities that children provide in those first few years of life. In fact, the more your child learns before school, the more they will be able to learn after they start school. With its diverse and balanced curriculum, York Enrichment Childcare Centre will give your child the best opportunity to master skills that they will need as they grow into adults. Contact Us for more information about the Emergent Curriculum or to book an appointment to view the Emergent Curriculum in action.

Emergent Curriculum in the Toddler, Preschool and Kindergarten Classrooms

Emergent Curriculum covers all areas of development in a way that is most suitable for learning. Children learn at different rates and the Emergent Curriculum helps teachers present information in several different methods. This increases your child’s opportunity to learn the material. The Emergent Curriculum covers these skills and more at York Enrichment Childcare Centre:

Toddlers develop skills in the following areas:

• Social skills such as sharing, turn taking, listening and participating, and asking for help.
• Cognitive Skills such as colours, shapes, numbers, matching and sorting, language skills.
• Creativity such as dress-up, exploring with different types of media, dance and creative movement, music and art.
• Self Help Skills such as eating on their own, dressing themselves, and toilet training when ready.
• Special Days such as special guests, concerts, community visits, water play, picnics.

Preschoolers develop skills in the following areas:

• Social Skills such as developing a positive sense of self, expressing their own feelings and thoughts to individuals and within a group setting.
• Self Help Skills such as dressing themselves, toilet training, table manners.
• Communication Skills such as interacting in a positive manner with their peers and adults.
• Kindergarten Readiness Skills such as letter and number recognition, basic science experiments, math concepts (sequencing, measurement, shapes)
• Creativity through arts such as developing self-expression, creativity and imagination.
• French Lessons, Cooking.
• Special Days such as special guests, concerts, community visits, water play, picnics.

Kindergarten students develop skills in the following areas:

• Literacy such as reading and discussing books, phonetics and introduction to simple reading.
• Math such as addition, subtraction, seriating, measurement, patterning.
• Science such as study of the human body, weather, magnets, animals and plants, etc.
• Social Skills such as participating in group activities, developing a sense of independence, expressing personal opinions, developing positive relationships with peers and teachers.
• Character Education such as respect, inclusivity, positive communication skills and critical thinking.
• Arts such as painting, sculpting, music, creative movement and drama.
• French Lessons, Cooking.

The Kindergarten Program also Includes the Following:

• Alternate day childcare and P.A. Days.
• March Break, Christmas Break and Summer Camps.
• Three (3) daily meals included.
• Special Theme Days, trips, guests (with minimal parent contributions).