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Starbright Curriculum
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Play and exploration are crucial activities for young children for they help the child's brain develop in optimal ways. The more the child is allowed to move, explore, and experience, the more complex are the brain connections that are developed. This leads to greater intelligence and creativity.
Play sharpens physical reflexes. When a child kicks a ball across a playground she is practicing coordination by balancing on one foot to kick with the other. Intelligence is developed during imaginative play, a core component of our curriculum. Using imaginative play the child explores the use of symbols and symbolic thinking forms the basis for later abstract thinking. When a child pretends a stick is a hammer and builds a castle from rocks and sticks, she is using symbolic thinking to transform items found in nature into a fantasy castle. Social bonds are strengthened when children play together for they learn interpersonal and social skills. Play requires children to make choices and often involves strategizing, or planning to reach a goal. This leads to problem solving and negotiating skills.
Play meets many deep seated emotional needs of the young child. It enables them to make sense of the many aspects of the world that surrounds them. Studies have shown compelling evidence of a relationship between the lack of childhood play and later eruptions of violence.
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Artistic Activities
Many different artistic activities take place at Starbright. The artistic activities are not just the visual arts, but also include music, drama, movement, and the so-called more "traditional" domestic arts. The visual arts include wet-wash watercolor painting, beeswax modeling, coloring and drawing (the fine arts), and a multitude of crafts from simple gluing and playdough to papermaking and ceramics.
Domestic art includes bread baking, general baking, cooking (including soup making) and handwork, such as sewing, fingerknitting, and embroidery. Music is found not only in the daily circle but throughout the day during transitions, while preparing for and cleaning up from activities, and as the teachers gently sing reminders to the children. The children play instruments, usually rhythm, inside and in the play yard, and adult musicians visit the school bringing a multitude of different instruments to play and share with the children.
Artistic activities work at many different levels for the developing child. The child not only develops a specific skill when exploring the medium, but develops necessary physical, emotional, social and cognitive skills as well.
The young child explores decision making and problem solving as well as the creative process while developing control over the medium. The child's fine motor skills are involved, especially hand and finger coordination and the strengthening of the large arm muscles, leading into later writing and thus reading skills. Artistic activities develop creative thinking skills in children. For example, mixing blue and yellow paint together creates green; by mixing colors, children learn to create new colors.
Wet wash watercolor painting is a excellent example of how artistic activities in the classroom work on the child in a three-fold way. It is an exploration of the medium and an adventure in color creation that involves discovering the energetic or emotional quality of color and becomes an emotional expression for the child. Most important, it is an expression of the child's inner being and a reflection of her inner resources.
Bread baking is another excellent example of a complex artistic activity for the young child, one with many levels of development that come into play during the process. Baking develops numerous cognitive skills as well as fine and gross motor skills: as the child measures, pours, stirs, and kneads, large and small muscles are used. The measurement of ingredients teaches mathematical concepts. Baking also creates building blocks for later advanced scientific lab work. When we bake, we follow a recipe and we learn that when we mix certain ingredients together a new product is created. In high school chemistry, we must follow a recipe when we perform experiments and we learn that combining different materials together forms a new product. Children also learn cooperative skills as they take turns measuring and mixing. Children develop a sense of competence when they eat the bread that they have made.
Songs, stories, finger plays and circle games expose the children to rich language, develop listening skills, and help children recognize sounds in words and rhyming schemes in verses, all of which lay the basis for the understanding of phonics. Oral listening skills build language competence in grammar, memory, attention, and visualization. These are important skills in developing literacy. Oral storytelling and oral history provide an opportunity to tap the richness of cultural traditions outside the mainstream. Additionally, circle games and finger plays develop fine and gross motor skills.
Eurythmy is a movement exercise that is specific to Waldorf education. There are two kinds, voice and music. The preschool child teacher uses spoken verses and rhymes to lead the children through the movements in a meditative way. Eurythmy develops coordination as well as other motor skills. It helps the child become centered as the combination of movement, verse and atmosphere work together on the body, emotions and spirit. And, importantly, it speaks to the child's inner self creating a sense of mystery and magic.
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Science and Nature Exploration
Nature exploration gives the young child building blocks for later scientific discovery. Having the opportunity to observe, explore, and discover in a natural setting gives the child invaluable knowledge based on their own experiences. Understanding life cycles, comparing the possible uses of different soils, sands and surfaces, discovering the complexity and uniqueness present in nature all create a foundation from which to later extrapolate new theories and ideas.
The young child is uniquely in harmony with seasonal changes. Seasonal songs, fingerplays, and stories introduce different aspects of nature into the child's imagination. Artistic and craft activities reinforce what is occurring in nature around the child, and the hands-on experience allows the child to observe for himself and to actually encounter nature in all it glorious variety.
At Starbright, rather than learning that involves only talking about nature, the children are able to explore for themselves first-hand. The children plant seasonal vegetables and herbs as well as perennial and annual flowers. Gardening teaches children about seasons and how plants develop from seeds and bulbs. This forms a basis for biology and ecology in later academics. When children dig, hoe and rake they build strong muscles. Weeding teaches classification and sorting skills as well as developing fine motor skills.
Our large play yard has many different natural materials--dirt, grass, sand, gravel, trees, leaves, logs, and boulders. Children learn through all their senses and need to be allowed to explore nature through touch. When children discover a lizard or insect in the yard they learn about nature.
At Starbright, the children help us care for our guinea pigs, hamster, fish, and snake. This teaches children animal husbandry skills as well as nurturing skills and responsibility.
Indoors, the children have a nature table in each room, pertinent to the seasons. There are natural materials to use--shells, stones, blocks cut from trees. There are plants growing in the classrooms and cut flowers from the gardens on the tables. Sometimes the children eat the vegetables that they plant and use the herbs in art projects and cooking projects.
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Foreign Languages
At Starbright the children explore and experience Spanish and sign language. The children are exposed to foreign language through songs, stories, circle games, finger plays, as well as practical activities like cooking. The children learn language in a fun and natural way. There is no homework and the children are not drilled on vocabulary. Our goal is to provide early exposure to sign language during the stage of development when language is acquired naturally. This exposure provides familiarity with more than one language and lays down neural pathways in the brain for foreign language fluency.
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Multicultural holidays and festival
An important component of our curriculum is the seasonal and multi-cultural holidays and festivals. At Starbright, we celebrate many holidays and festivals from many different traditions, providing the children an opportunity to learn about their own culture as well as other cultures. We invite the parents to help us celebrate these holidays and festivals, celebrating holidays together provides a way to build a community of parents, teachers, and children. Many times the celebrations are low key, with a craft or special food prepared, sometimes special songs, or stories. Occasionally, the celebrations include pi–atas or musicians and special visitors demonstrating specific cultural activities.
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Family Community Building
Parents are involved in many ways at Starbright. There are parent evenings and potlucks, school parties, celebrations, and festivals, such as the Garden of Lights, the Pumpkin Patch, Valentine Exchange, and the Egg Hunt. Parents help with school laundry and provide snacks. Parents gather on workdays to maintain and improve the play yard. Parents advise on fundraising, communication and in other areas. Parents bring special projects to the children. Parents demo special skills to the children. Parents help with animal care and school repairs. Parents attend field trips.
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References:
"Art for the Fun of it, a guide for teaching young children", Peggy Davison Jenkins.
"Curiosity, Pleasure and Play: A Neurodevelopmental Perspective." Bruce Perry, M.D. Ph.D., Lea Hogan, M.Ed. and Sarah J. Marlin, Baylor Medical Student, haaeyc Advocate 9, August 2000
"Education, Play & the Intelligence of the Heart", Karen Anderson, Steiner College Newsletter.
"Endangered Minds, Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do About It," Jane M. Heahly, PhD.
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© 2009 Starbright Preschool