Curriculum
Curriculum
The emotional and social well being of each child is of prime importance to all of us at Poker Hill School. Secure and happy children can grow and flourish. Our goal is to help children separate comfortably from their parents and find school a safe and happy place to be. We value sociodramatic play because it stimulates children to play cooperatively together and to develop friendships. This play also allows children to express feelings, anxieties and work through emotional issues.
The arts are also an integral part of the daily Poker Hill School experience. We value the process of art for its own sake, because through art the child is able to express his or her inner world of fantasies and feelings and can explore and order his or her perceptions of the world. We provide the time, space and materials for self-initiated art projects throughout the day. Our art projects, whether teacher-directed or child-initiated, are open-ended and allow each child to discover his or her own way without correction, comparison, or interruption. Music fills our days as we sing, play instruments, and dance. We believe that if we awaken the artist and the musician within each child, their lives will be incomparably enriched and fulfilled.
We believe that reading and writing, just like the spoken language skills that precede them, are developmental skills that emerge according to an internal clock within each learner. Our goal is to stimulate that emergence by providing an environment rich in print and in which reading and writing are used in meaningful ways. We read to the children every day, and we attempt to make books come alive through dramatizations and by using books as springboards for many other activities.
Our emphasis in mathematics is on laying the experiential foundation for mathematical concepts and relationships essential for later learning. This foundation is developed through the repeated manipulation, classification, and comparison of a multitude of concrete objects.
We support each child’s physical development each day, emphasizing the development of strength, flexibility, balance, and body awareness as well as the development of specific skills. We offer large motor activities and provide large motor play during free time in both the morning and the afternoon. Our outdoor environment, including the playground, driveway for trike, bike and scooter riding, gardens, fields, stream, pond and woods provide rich learning opportunities for all curriculum areas throughout the seasons.
Teachers share responsibility for curriculum. We draw both from emergent curriculum practices as well as from The Creative Curriculum for Preschool to ensure we are developing and implementing rich curriculum for every child.
The emotional and social well being of each child is of prime importance to all of us at Poker Hill School. Secure and happy children can grow and flourish. Our goal is to help children separate comfortably from their parents and find school a safe and happy place to be. We value sociodramatic play because it stimulates children to play cooperatively together and to develop friendships. This play also allows children to express feelings, anxieties and work through emotional issues.
The arts are also an integral part of the daily Poker Hill School experience. We value the process of art for its own sake, because through art the child is able to express his or her inner world of fantasies and feelings and can explore and order his or her perceptions of the world. We provide the time, space and materials for self-initiated art projects throughout the day. Our art projects, whether teacher-directed or child-initiated, are open-ended and allow each child to discover his or her own way without correction, comparison, or interruption. Music fills our days as we sing, play instruments, and dance. We believe that if we awaken the artist and the musician within each child, their lives will be incomparably enriched and fulfilled.
We believe that reading and writing, just like the spoken language skills that precede them, are developmental skills that emerge according to an internal clock within each learner. Our goal is to stimulate that emergence by providing an environment rich in print and in which reading and writing are used in meaningful ways. We read to the children every day, and we attempt to make books come alive through dramatizations and by using books as springboards for many other activities.
Our emphasis in mathematics is on laying the experiential foundation for mathematical concepts and relationships essential for later learning. This foundation is developed through the repeated manipulation, classification, and comparison of a multitude of concrete objects.
We support each child’s physical development each day, emphasizing the development of strength, flexibility, balance, and body awareness as well as the development of specific skills. We offer large motor activities and provide large motor play during free time in both the morning and the afternoon. Our outdoor environment, including the playground, driveway for trike, bike and scooter riding, gardens, fields, stream, pond and woods provide rich learning opportunities for all curriculum areas throughout the seasons.
Teachers share responsibility for curriculum. We draw both from emergent curriculum practices as well as from The Creative Curriculum for Preschool to ensure we are developing and implementing rich curriculum for every child.
Discipline
At Poker Hill School, we focus on preventing discipline problems from arising. This involves setting rules, informing children of consequences, enforcing rules consistently, and redirecting problematic behavior. We encourage children to feel empathy for each other, and we emphasize the golden rule: treat others the way you would like to be treated. Teachers mediate conflict situations, looking for win/win solutions whenever possible. We encourage children to talk through problems as they arise. During large group meetings, the children help us develop other rules as needed. We aim to teach children to own their behavior and to make good choices.
