The Early Years program is organized into five broad learning and developmental domains and is aligned to the Standards of New York State Pre-Kindergarten Foundation for the Common Core and enriched by the New York State Early Learning Guidelines.

1.Approaches to Learning.
2.Physical Development & Health
3.Social & Emotional Development
4.Communication, Language & Literacy
5.Cognition and Knowledge of the World

Learning and development are integrated and occur simultaneously across all domains, and teachers work in partnership with parents to get the very best from all students.

Children at this age are concrete learners so the primary approach to learning will be through purposeful and exploratory play where children learn from their experiences when they engage actively and directly with their environment and pursue questions that emerge from their observations, experiments, investigations and interactions. The program is both interdisciplinary and integrated which creates learning opportunities for the children that are relevant, meaningful and contextual.

Our Master Educators also spend significant time in after-school collaborative planning sessions to create rich learning experiences that invite participation, involve multiple contexts, and engage the children to explore their environment. The teacher will guide children’s enquiries, ask meaningful questions, make connections to different fields of study, and provide continuity in experiences to facilitate and enable learning across all domains.

In addition to the traditional curriculum, the teachers will work closely with each child to develop skills and competencies such as leadership, adaptability and empathy.