Pre-School Program
Our experienced pre-school teachers will introduce your preschooler to cognitive skills (such as matching and sequencing), social skills (including effective communication and embracing diversity), as well as language arts and literacy skills (like storytelling and writing). At this crucial developmental stage, STEM Child Care works diligently to promote self-confidence and independence in our preschoolers by encouraging them to proceed at their own pace based on their unique needs and abilities. Our comprehensive curriculum includes not only an emphasis on STEM, but also presents opportunities for shared and independent learning experiences in the areas of dramatic play, music, creative arts, computers, and fitness.
To engage and empower your child, we provide a balance between freedom and guided instruction. Our preschool classroom challenges students to refine their motor skills as well as expand their knowledge about the world around them. Using carefully designed classroom environments and engaging activities, our teachers make sure that your children are offered fun, meaningful learning experiences that will prepare them for both academic and personal success.
Science
Our program for preschoolers successfully inspires our students to approach science eagerly and with natural curiosity. Your children are consistently engaged in research and experimentation by testing hypotheses, and learning how things work through personal discovery. For example, our teachers carefully organize learning experiences that promote creativity, curiosity, and the development of skills necessary for scientific inquiry, including examining objects on a light box or light table, using microscopes, and documenting findings or observations graphically through pictures and charts.
Technology
Our pre-schoolers are taught how to correctly handle and care for toys and devices with an emphasis on active use of technology that promotes meaningful learning experiences. Examples of active learning with technology includes sharing experiences by documenting them with photos and stories, recording their own music, and using video chatting software to interact with loved ones, as these types of use will deeply engage the child, stimulate cognitive development, and enable purposeful learning.
We use technology to increase access to learning opportunities for our children. Technology can effectively complement, enhance, and facilitate learning in ways that would otherwise be impossible. For instance, using technology, we can safely introduce your children to cultures and places outside the immediate community. Although children may have access to pictures and print resources, technology can easily increase the amount of reference information readily and immediately available to them, providing the ability to more thoroughly engage with a given topic by asking questions.
Engineering
Engineering is all about discovering how things are built and why. It’s about finding ways to build things better and solving problems through the creation of new technologies. But for preschoolers, engineering is all about play. Engineering for preschoolers can manifest as building challenges, blocks, marble runs, and sandcastles, as these activities help them develop engineering concepts as foundations of their learning. It is at this point that they begin to understand that we can use tools to help us do things better or faster.
A successful engineering curriculum for preschoolers gives students plenty of opportunities to build, explore, and discover, both on their own and with guidance. We also use picture and project books to encourage our preschoolers to be creative with their structures promoting their visual-spatial skills and capacities for innovation.
Mathematics
We emphasize building a strong foundation of mathematics skills, enabling children to solve everyday problems and approach situations logically. Whether it’s counting marbles or fitting cylinders into circular holes, our preschoolers consistently experiment with and apply math concepts to everyday situations.
Our teachers devise creative learning experiences that improve math skills and reasoning capabilities so that children can problem solve by using mathematics principles in meaningful ways, including sorting items by size, color, and shape, stringing beads in patterns, counting out items and matching to numerical cards, and experimenting with measuring cups on the sand or water sensory tables.
Language
Our program will effectively challenge your preschooler’s language skills and literacy development. During Pre-School, vocabulary and word comprehension expands from a few hundred to several thousand words, and this demonstrates the significance of proper instruction at this critical age.
Our curriculum encourages children to combine listening, speaking, early reading, and writing into their daily activities, including recognizing letters and sounds, answering open-ended questions, playing language and rhyming games, and following along in children’s books as well as reading aloud to the class.
Arts
We encourage children’s appreciation of the arts by focusing on the importance of self-expression and individuality. Our emphasis on artistic exploration fosters significant skills such as creative thinking, problem solving, and innovation.
Our preschool teachers promote your children’s artistic abilities and cultivate an appreciation of art by engaging in creative experiences, including working on long-term art projects (such as paper-mâché sculptures), singing songs, making/playing instruments, painting to the sound of music, and creating dramatic play areas.
