Our Philosophy
At Planet Kids, we envision pre-school as an exciting adventure in learning for your child. Our primary mission is to provide a fun and nurturing climate for your child to grow and learn. To that end, we present children with developmentally age-appropriate programs that emphasize physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual growth. We encourage our children through positive reinforcement, which fosters development of their self-esteem and self-confidence. And we celebrate each child’s success so that he or she is able to grow into creative, independent thinkers and lifelong learners.
Among our many goals, we strive to ensure that each child develops:
The skills necessary to understand themselves and their relationships with others.
His or Her physical growth in both gross and fine motor areas.
The skills necessary to encourage communication.
The skills necessary to stimulate the growth of creative oral and written language.
The acceptance of His or Her emotions and those of others, while identifying appropriate strategies to deal with them.
OUR
PROGRAM
Our educational model assures children individualized attention.
The curriculum for each class level is designed to provide an age-appropriate, integrated-learning approach to encourage physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development. Emphasis is placed on the preparation of academic skills needed for Kindergarten.
All curriculum is created with an integrated-theme approach based upon Kindergarten readiness skills that have been made age-appropriate for all class levels through Pre-Kindergarten. All activities build on each other so that children have a more extensive understanding of the concepts presented and will see the relationships between the ideas as they progress through each year’s Program.
Concepts are taught through the use of inquiry, observation, a variety of manipulative materials, and whole language. In addition, children are challenged to reason, think creatively, make decisions, and problem solve on an age appropriate level.
Moreover, Planet Kids serves to attract heart-centered, children-first teachers who share our philosophy of experiential education and respect for the individual child. Our goal is to create a sense of “extended family” for your child.
Spiritual development within all students is encouraged daily through heart-centered and compassionate communication, social-interaction and role-modeling throughout every school day.
Our enriched programming of action-oriented, guided-discovery learning practices appeals to those who want significantly more than traditional child care or preschool. Planet Kids Academy operates from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., offering a full-day program three, four, or five days a week for families seeking an added dimension of socialization and personal development for their child. Our programs are developmentally based so children can grow and learn with others who share their abilities.
Children are welcomed into a warm, nurturing environment where they receive an abundance of personal attention and love from heart-centered, compassionate teachers.
The curriculum for this age group centers around a very important area of development – language both as a receptive skill (understanding the meaning of words) and the expressive skill (the forming and usage of spoken words). The younger child will always develop a stronger receptive language ability first before the emergence of a vocabulary (spoken words) and syntax (sentence formation). Our experienced teachers are focused upon this area of development throughout the Toddler years.
Another special area of emphasis for these classes is language development. Toddler Teachers co-create with their young students by engaging with them in free-play activities designed to encourage the exploration of their learning environment and specially arranged learning centers. The focus emphasizing language development and usage and social interaction and connection.
Our daily curriculum includes age-appropriate activities that teach upper-case letter recognition, phonemic sounds, formation of the written letter, and in the recognition of and writing of their first names. Students will learn to recognize the names of numbers through counting activities and working with numbers and their quantity. They will learn to recognize and name shapes and colors, and come to learn about spacial concepts. Through these daily activities our young students will build skills in the area of fine-motor leading to their ability to begin printing tasks, such as writing their name. Our curriculum is enhanced through the use of art and its tools, as well as through music and song and physical movement that develops their gross-motor abilities. It is a busy time for our earliest learners.
As children learn best through play, our program is designed to utilize play opportunities as a means for helping the children to develop emotionally, intellectually, physically and socially. We encourage learning as toddlers freely explore the various areas of their classroom. Our daily activities include recognition of the alphabet, numbers, shapes and colors, as well as the development of fine motor skills, arts and crafts, creative song, and dance skills. Computers, music classes and interactive learning tools broaden horizons even at this early stage of learning.
All of this happening under the nurturing eyes of our heart-centered and compassionate team of Toddler Teachers who remain particularly engaged and loving throughout this formative stage of development centered around the Toddlers need for independent thought and action as they each gain their independence.
Amazing growth and development occurs at this age level as our students transition from being Toddlers to becoming Preschoolers.
Although the Three-year old preschool curriculum will continue to build upon the cognitive foundations of the Toddler programs, the daily activities will begin to shift with teacher-directed activities increasing as child-initiated play decreases. This purposely happens as the Preschool program begins its acceleration towards more approximation to Kindergarten readiness skill building, albeit in the same safe, loving, nurturing, compassionate, environment as found in our Toddler programs. Our heart-centered Preschool Teachers continue to strive to inspire, motivate, and co-create with our newbie Preschoolers through effective praise, suggestion, role-modeling and encouragement.
The daily Preschool curriculum of age-appropriate activities continues to build upon the language, math, fine-motor, gross-motor, social/emotional and artistic skill foundation that was built in the Toddler programs as we reach to develop their Kindergarten readiness. Our enrichment activities in physical movement, music and song continue and are integrated into the daily routines. The Computer Lab is introduced in the Three-Year old program using software programming that also reinforces and enhances the daily curriculum.
Our daily developmentally appropriate curriculum includes both self-directed and teacher-directed activities that introduce areas of language arts, physical education, creative movement and music, math, art, computer, science, social studies, and foreign language.
The Graduation Year has arrived as we focus upon all of our Kindergarten readiness skill development with our young students.
At this level of learning our daily curriculum shifts to a greater percentage of teacher-directed, age-appropriate activities that help our young learners to listen to and better-able follow multiple-step directions, which will be much of the designed curriculum format in Kindergarten. Our goal remains that of fostering appropriate social skill, communication, and interaction as we develop our peer relationships. Both areas of development helping us to ready your children for a smooth transition from Preschool to Kindergarten – bridging the gap between the small, intimate, nurturing environment of Preschool to the larger, impersonal, subjective environment of a school system. Students are encouraged, supported and praised as they practice skills that promote independence and self-sufficiency. Through role-modeling and focused curriculum building the students’ self-esteem continues to be a priority and daily focus.
Daily routines and curriculum continue to build upon and develop in the areas of language (receptive, expressive and now-written), reading readiness, math concepts, science, social studies, art, and physical movement activities. Additionally – child-directed play, quiet-play choices (library), and the continuation of rest time are also incorporated into a well-balanced Pre-Kindergarten day.
During June and July, we focus our curriculum on fine arts for children up to age 5.
At this time our curriculum is focused on activities that allow the children to practice the skills we have taught during the academic portion of the year. We call this applied learning. This is also the two months of the year that we replace our daily Music and Movement activities with the opening of SPLASH PAD!
