Curriculum
We pride ourselves on being a multicultural center and our curriculum supports this. We focus on introducing the world to infants and toddlers as multicultural and full of diversity. Our goal is to introduce diversity in our center and integrate it into The Children's Garden's everyday routine. The teacher's prepare the center every morning for children's exploration. Our curriculum not only focuses on cultural differences, but also reflects the diversity between learners. Using the 8 Multiple Intelligences, we have many different ways that children can learn:
- Music
- Art
- Writing and drawing
- Reading
- Independent and large group activities
- Outdoor learning experiences
Our ongoing theme at The Children's Garden is COMMUNITIES AROUND THE WORLD. While exploring this theme, we touch on things such as
- Family-displaying pictures of different types of families at the children's level
- Folktales and Fairytales-reading different cultures stories
- Holidays-celebrating different holidays from different cultures
- Food-trying new foods
- Stories-including all types of people in our classroom books
- Clothing-providing cultural clothing in our dramatic play area
- Art-using different techniques from different cultures to create art
Assessment
To assure the documentation of your child's learning, The Children's Garden uses the Focused Portfolio for assessment purposes.
Artifacts, such as pictures, anecdotes from a teacher, or work samples taken from your child, will be gathered two to three times per year to document your child's progress in areas of cognitive thinking, language development, and motor skills. Focused portfolios provide concrete examples your child's strengths and weaknesses as they are compared with average performance of children of comparable ages. Two to three times per year, parents will be asked to conference with teachers and talk about their child's progress.
When the portfolio year is completed, the portfolio will be given to the parent as a keep sake.