Curriculum: Early Childhood: Pre-K Prep through Kindergarten

The Early Years curriculum is based around the British “Foundation Years” program which leads into the Primary Cambridge curriculum. We use the 6 strands of the “Foundation Years” curriculum and integrate it with our very own “green awareness”.

The six strands of the Foundation Years program are:

• Personal, social and emotional development
• Communication, language and literacy
• Problem Solving, Reasoning, and Mathematical development
• Knowledge and Understanding of the World
• Physical development
• Creative development

We aim to assist young children understand the world around them and develop independence and interdependence. Dramatic play, dress-ups, puppets and songs all help children to make sense of human interaction and develop social skills. In Communication and Literacy we assist them to develop concepts and ideas, and develop oral and written language. Before children are able to learn to read and write, they need to develop skills that form the basis for further literacy development. For example, they need to know that in English we read print from left to right, how to look after and take care of books, and to understand that the spoken word can be translated into print.

In developing reasoning skills and mathematical development, we encourage children to understand “how things work” and to make predictions themselves based on their daily activities. Questions like “what might happen if you mix water with the sand?”, “what will happen if you put another block on top of that tower?” encourage children to notice and reflect upon the world around them. Counting, matching and sorting, comparing objects size, shape and colour all help develop their mathematical readiness.

Fine-motor and gross-motor skills are very important in an Early Years program. As children cut out shapes or mould a shape from play-dough, they are developing their finger grip to enable them to be able to control a pencil when they move into letter formation. Much educational literature is available correlating gross-motor skills with optimum learning. Along with being able to climb and coordinate their whole body in a range of movements, children need time to simply run around on the grass freely to develop their large muscles.

Craft and art help to develop their creative side, and is often linked with a theme or concept we are learning about. All of this will be interwoven with learning about the world around us. The trees, grass, flowers, bamboo, rocks, crystals, rainbows, rivers, animals and birds around us is a natural learning environment which provokes wonder and underpins all of our learning in Early Years.

We are Growing Up Green, in Green School, Bali.