The Program Philosophy at Child's Day

We will work together to help your child acquire the skills, attitudes, and habits to do well in school and throughout life.

Do you want your child to :
become an avid reader	have good study skills
enjoy solving math problems	get along well with others
speak and write well	be self-confident
be creative	enjoy learning
make decisions independently	love school

Parents often ask, "What is my child actually learning in preschool? And what can I do at home to help?" This page explains our philosophy and goals. It describes what children learn from the activities, environment, daily schedule, and from our conversations with them. Finally, it tells what you can do to help your child learn.

Our Philosophy

The philosophy behind our curriculum is that young children learn best by doing. Learning isn't just repeating what someone else says; it requires active thinking and experimenting to find out how things work and to learn firsthand about the world we live in.

In their early years, children explore the world around them by using all their senses: touching, tasting, smelling, and looking.

In using real materials such as blocks and testing their ideas, children learn about sizes, shapes, and colors, and they notice relationships between things.

In time, they learn to use one object to stand for another. This is the beginning of symbolic thinking. For example, they might pretend a stick is an airplane or a block is a hamburger. These early symbols - the stick and the block - are similar in shape to the objects they represent. Gradually children become more able to use abstract symbols like words to describe their thoughts and feelings. They learn to "read" pictures which are symbols of real people, places, and things. This exciting development in symbolic thinking takes place during the preschool years as children play.

Play provides the foundation for academic or "school" learning. It is the preparation children need before they learn highly abstract symbols such as letters ( which are symbols for sounds) and numbers ( which are symbols for number concepts). Play enables us to achieve the key goals of our early childhood curriculum. Play is the work of young children.

The Goals of Our Curriculum

The most important goal of our early childhood curriculum is to help children become enthusiastic learners. This means encouraging children to be active and creative explorers who are not afraid to try out their ideas and to think their own thoughts. Our goal is to help children become independent, self-confident, inquisitive learners. We are teaching them how to learn, not just in preschool, but all through their lives. We encourage them to develop good habits and attitudes, particularly a positive sense of themselves, which will make a difference throughout their lives.

Social	help children feel comfortable in school, trust their new environment, make friends, and feel they are part of a group.
Emotional	help children experience pride and self-confidence, develop independence and self-control, and have a positive attitude toward life.
Cognitive	help children become confident learners by letting them test their own ideas and experience success, and by helping them acquire learning skills such as the ability to solve problems, ask questions, and use words to describe their thoughts and feelings.
Physical	help children increase their large and small muscle skills and feel confident about what their bodies can do.

The activities we plan for children, the way we organize the environment, select toys and materials, plan the daily schedule, interact and talk with children, are all designed to accomplish the goals of our curriculum and give your child a successful start.

What Children Learn at Home

Our curriculum works best when teachers and parents work together. Each of us has something valuable to contribute.

Our teachers are formally trained in child development and early childhood education. We see how your child acts with other children and adults. We can assess what your child is learning and how he or she compares to other children.

But only you have in-depth knowledge of your child. You know best your child's interests, fears, joys, patterns, and past. You are most familiar with the world your child is trying to understand. You know about the relationships between the members of your family, and you have shared many of your child's experiences, from family events to trips to the doctor's office or the zoo.

This "in-depth" knowledge makes you central to your child's learning process and a very valuable resource for teachers. If you share with us what is happening to your child at home - the arrival of a new baby, the loss of a pet, nightmares, temper tantrums, trips, separation or divorce - we can better understand your child. We can deal with both positive and difficult events through reassuring stories, soothing art activities, imaginative dramatic play, and extra love and attention.

We also see you as your child's first and most important teacher. Your home is your child's first and continual learning environment. You determine your family's daily routines - when you get up, eat, play, do chores, visit friends, and go to bed. The way you talk with your children makes a tremendous difference in how they think, how they feel about themselves, and the kind of person they will become.

Working together - We can do some of the same things at school and at home. The more consistent adults are, the more secure your child is likely to feel, and when children feel secure, they are more likely to explore, to experiment, and to learn.

Many parents have asked us what they can do to help their children succeed in school. We usually reply, "Just try to encourage your child to explore and learn in your home environment the way we help children at school. Help your child become an independent, enthusiastic, curious learner." You don't need to buy a lot of special toys or equipment to turn your child into a creative thinker. The best thing you can do is be a good listener and to talk with your child as you go about your normal, everyday household routine. Sometimes, after a long day at work, this may seem difficult. But you will find this kind of attention has a wonderful effect on children and makes your job as a parent more fun and interesting - and sometimes easier.

ABC's and 123's Earlier Is Not Better

Many parents are concerned when their children are not learning letters and numbers. They believe ditto sheets and homework in preschool programs will better prepare their children for elementary school.

We could give your children workbooks. We could make them memorize the alphabet. We could drill them. We could test them. But we know if we do, your children are going to lose something very important.

Children who are rushed into reading and writing too soon miss important steps in learning and will suffer later on because they lack the foundation needed for using language. Children who are taught to read in preschool may be able to sound out and recognize words, but they may also have little understanding of what they are reading. If they have not been given time to play, they have not explored objects enough to know what words (like "hard, harder, hardest") mean. If they are not allowed to string beads, buttons, dress up, cut, paste, pour, and draw, they will not develop the small muscle skills they need for writing.

Math involves more than memorizing facts (like 2+2=4). Because it involves logical thinking, children should not be pushed into paper and pencil arithmetic too soon. To acquire the foundation for logical thinking, children need many opportunities to count objects, sort them into piles, add some to a pile and take some away. By playing games like these, they will come to truly understand addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. Without repetition of these concrete experiences, children may give correct answers but probably will not understand what they are doing or why.

Worst of all, if children are rushed into academic subjects too soon, they may lose their enthusiasm for learning and lose their sense of themselves as learners. If children are told what to learn and memorize by the teacher, they may become more passive and dependent learners, and be less excited about learning something new. Children who are given plenty of time to play learn to ask their own questions and figure out their own answers. They are responsible for their own learning. They see themselves as explorers, discoverers, inventors, and problem solvers.

There are many benefits associated with high quality early childhood programs.

According to scientific research, children who attend high quality programs achieve measurable benefits in school success, social and emotional competence. They:

The families of children in high quality early childhood programs benefit in the following ways:

families report pride in the quality of their family unity a decade after program participation

family members report that participation helped them improve their child-rearing practices and cope with family crises.

High quality early childhood programs:

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) established its criteria for Accreditation to help identify early childhood programs demonstrating a commitment to providing high quality programs for young children and their families. In Austin, only a fraction of licensed centers have received Accreditation through the NAEYC program.

For more information about Accreditation and a list of Accredited facilities in Austin, contact the NAEYC's National Academy of Early Childhood Programs in Washington, DC at (800) 424-2460, or call Austin Families (327-7878), the Austin area's non-profit child care resource and referral agency.