The Environment

The basic component of Starbright’s curriculum is to provide a safe, nurturing environment, in which the children’s interactions with the teachers and each other provide a core of security. This core is essential for all complex brain development, higher intelligence, and creativity, and is the foundation for all ethical, moral, and social concepts. The children enjoy warm, meaningful interactions with loving adults, in a secure space, where they know that they are cherished, respected, and honored.

Imaginative Play

Play is the basis of experiential learning. Play takes many forms, but the heart of all play is pleasure. While the exact nature of play evolves and becomes more complex as we grow, play at all ages brings pleasure. In addition, with pleasure comes the powerful drive to repeat the pleasurable activity. With repetition comes mastery. The more comfortable a child feels with the world, the more likely she will explore, discover, master, and learn. This cycle starts with curiosity. Play can satisfy curiosity as the child explores his environment. Children are driven to interact with their world, to build a structure of knowledge through the “experiments” of play.

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.

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.

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. Outdoor spaces that allow children to explore and learn about the world’s natural elements enhance their understanding and appreciation of the environment.  When children discover a lizard or insect in the yard they learn about nature, sometimes bringing them indoors for closer observation.

At Starbright, the children help us care for our rabbit and  fish.   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.

Pre-Literacy Activites

Pre-literacy skills are the first step towards reading.  At Starbright we promote these skills in fun, imaginative ways, through activities, songs, stories and play.

Reading to the children helps them develop listening skills and build their attention span and helps the child connect the spoken word with the written.  Starbright has an extensive library.  Each month one of our parent librarians changes the books in the classroom to correlate with the month’s curriculum,  the season,  and the skills the teachers are working on with the children. The children are taught how to properly care for the books.

Writing materials are provided and we use alphabet ink stamps and playdough stamps.The children are given the opportunity to recognize and learn how to spell their name.  At Starbright the alphabet is displayed using beautiful, aesthetically pleasing prints.  The children look at the letters, talking about them and singing the alphabet song.

Rhyming and repetition are essential for building literacy skills. The class Circle time consists of songs, circle games, fingerplays, puppet plays and stories which provides  an opportunity to build these basic reading skills in a fun way.  Phonological awareness is seamlessly incorporated into these activities.    The children learn to create mental pictures based on language.  A main component of beginning to read is the ability to form a mental picture from the words in order to give them meaning.  Circle activities in which the children learn ryhmes and poems exercises the ‘memorization’ muscle also.

Social & Self Help Skills

At Starbright, the children learn how to interact socially throughout the daily activities and imaginary play. They learn problem solving skills while working through a difficult task.  They learn negotiation skills with other children and teachers in all activites.  They learn manners at the snack table and lunch table.  They learn patience while waiting and empathy when they have hurt someone or someone is just sad and needs space.  The teachers work with each child to learn self control over irrational impulses and how to express themselves properly when angry.  Community skills,  such as sharing, taking turns and how to treat others and the classroom belongings with respect are learned as they help with clean up or work together on group projects.  The teachers work with the children to learn conflict resolution, a complicated skill that will help them all through life.   They work with each child  whenever a disagreement occurs with another child that can not be easily resolved.

At Starbright,  the children are encouraged to help themselves whenever possible in an effort to foster independence.  They learn to pour water in their cups to drink,  they participate in parts of snack preparation, they spread their own cream cheese on crackers,  they use tongs to serve themselves and learn to give themselves an appropriate portion.  The children learn to care for their own belongings, including shoes, clothing, raincoats, boots, snack dishes, and lunch boxes.  They learn potty training (the younger children) and proper hand washing (all ages).  One of the most important self help skills, dressing themselves occurs all through the day as they take potty breaks, transition inside and out, puting on and taking off, shoes and jackets, and during imaginative play as they use classroom dress ups and play clothes.  Navigatting the terrain of the  play yard and learning how to use the play yard equipment is an important skill that leaves the chidren feeling proud of their ability.

Foreign Languages

At Starbright the children explore and experience Spanish. 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.

Multicultural Holidays & Festivals

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 pinatas or musicians and special visitors demonstrating specific cultural activities.

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 special activities such as puppet plays, animal visits, and musical events.

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