Language
Stories, conversation, songs, vocabulary, early writing, books, dramatic retellings, and important corrections to adult pronunciation.
RESEARCH STATUS
Extremely important.
Glue involved.
Preschool
Serious research. Mostly involving glue.
A lively program for tiny humans who are building friendships, testing ideas, telling stories, asking questions, making things, taking things apart, and asking why before you have finished answering the previous why.
Primary Research Method
WHY?
Curiosity has absolutely no office hours.
Preschoolers learn by asking, touching, building, pretending, comparing, noticing, experimenting, telling stories, and trying again when the first plan produces unexpected structural consequences.
A thoughtful preschool classroom gives children plenty of room to investigate their ideas while caring adults help them turn curiosity into learning.
Currently Investigating
Basically the entire world.
Preschool is where questions get bigger, conversations get longer, friendships get more complicated, and cardboard becomes whatever the situation requires.
Numbers
Counting, sorting, patterns, shapes, quantities, measurement, comparison, and making sure everybody received the same number of crackers.
Creativity
Drawing, painting, building, music, movement, collage, sculpture, storytelling, and determining whether something needs more glue.
Friendship
Playing together, taking turns, communicating needs, solving conflicts, negotiating pretend roles, and learning that somebody else can also be the tiger.
Science
Observe it. Ask about it. Predict what happens next. Test the theory. Become extremely excited when it bubbles.
Make Something
Creativity gets a lot of floor space.
Open-ended materials give preschoolers opportunities to plan, imagine, experiment, create, revise, combine ideas, and discover that the original plan was apparently only a suggestion.
Today's Loose Plan
Structure. With wiggle room.
A preschool day can provide predictable routines while leaving plenty of space for play, projects, stories, outdoor movement, meals, rest, and discoveries nobody scheduled.
01
Arrive
Put things away, say hello, find friends, inspect developments.
02
Play
Build, pretend, sort, create, read, explore, and establish several ongoing situations.
03
Gather
Stories, songs, conversation, questions, plans, and unrelated but urgent information.
04
Outside
Run, climb, balance, dig, investigate nature, and use the remaining available volume.
05
Create
Art, experiments, construction, music, literacy, numbers, and suspiciously ambitious projects.
06
Reset
Meals, quiet time, books, rest, and locating whichever sock has become independent.
07
Continue Tomorrow
Research remains incomplete.
Imagination Department
The cardboard box remains undefeated.
Pretend play helps children practice language, problem solving, cooperation, storytelling, perspective taking, planning, and the complicated economics of an imaginary restaurant where everything costs eleven dollars.
Build
Blocks, boxes, loose parts,
structures, roads, and things
with very specific purposes.
Pretend
Families, stores, kitchens,
hospitals, spaceships,
dinosaurs, and situations.
Tell
Stories get longer,
characters multiply,
and continuity becomes optional.
Negotiate
Roles, materials, rules,
turns, and who exactly
is driving the cardboard bus.
Meanwhile, at Pickup
“What's that on your shirt?”
Families should have useful information about classroom activities, learning, meals, rest, outdoor time, friendships, projects, routines, and the important developments behind today's mysterious paint situation.*
“I don't know.”
Template note: Age eligibility, curriculum, learning activities, meals, rest schedules, outdoor procedures, parent communication, staffing, assessment, toileting, safety procedures, and other operational details shown here are demonstration content. Replace them with the real center's policies before launch.
Observe the Research
Come see what they're working on.
Tour the preschool classroom, meet the team, ask about routines and learning, inspect current research projects, and discover why somebody is carrying seventeen pom-poms.