A typical day in the life of your toddler or preschooler begins far before the door is open at Woolsey Academy For Young Learners. Planning Circle Times, I Love You Rituals, Arts and Crafts, Music and Movement, Science and Discovery, Literacy and so much more, are centered around our child directed theme of the week and prepared in advance of your child's arrival each day.
What Did You Do At School Today?
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Inside and out, we are learning about plants, animals, letters, numbers, gardening, baby chicks, ducks, flowers, clouds, weather, snow, ice, polar animals, shapes, stars and planets. We are learning about worms, and dirt, how to water a seed, being kind, taking turns.....and the best part? It's all happening while we play! Our resident farm park animals include our spoiled silkies who LOVE to hatch babies!! Their names? Egg Sharin', Layer Swift, Kelly McCluckson, and Dolly Carton. Our lucky duckies are names Luke SkyWaddler and Duck Vader. The bunnies are two brothers that share a habitat and are named Bun Bun and Foofers (they didn't get in on the punny names!) Our silly sheep are Wooooly Nelson, and Baaab Marley! We have hand raised each alongside our little toddlers! What fun!!!
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At Woolsey Academy For Young Learners, we focus on all early learning domains to allow children to explore, discover, and learn through child-led, teacher-assisted activities and experiences. We communicate daily with our enrolled families via private communications to keep families updated with lessons, songs, experiments, menus, developmental milestones, and daily pictures of our children's unique learning journey.
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Each state has standards for Pre-K that must be met in order for a program to be considered "high-quality." At Woolsey Academy for Young Learners, we utilize the MELS, Missouri Early Learning Standards and the NAEYC DAP, National Association for the Education of Young Children Developmentally Appropriate Practices. The MELS standards can be found here. Our lessons are "State Aligned" to meet and exceed those standards to ensure that each child is developing socially/emotionally, physically, and academically on pace to reach his or her highest potential. Have questions on these? Please do not hesitate to ask!!
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Intertwined in learning about the alphabet, numbers, why chicken's lay eggs, and worms "swim" in the dirt, is the foundation for self-discipline. In the above clip you get to see the "why and how" of Conscious Discipline. It is a ten minute video, but please patiently watch it. This is one of my favorite examples of Conscious Discipline featuring its' creator, Dr. Becky Bailey. In this video clip she shares one of our beloved classroom songs...the S.T.A.R. song. It stands for Stop, Take a deep breathe, And, Relax. This is a very effective tool for helping a child regain his or her composure in any given situation. It is a song all of our children know by heart. We start them from the time they are old enough to use their ears and before your know it...they are fully engaged either by eyesight, touch, music and dance, or all of the above. Its so much better than magic because it's real, it's repeatable and it WORKS!
What are we having for lunch today?
Each day begins with a healthy breakfast approved and recommended by the Child and Adult Care Food Program in conjunction with the recommendations for healthy eating set forth by the USDA.
This is followed by a daily "circle time." This is a time for us to come together to discuss all the events, learning and themes that we will discover as a class that day. During circle time we observe the weather, plan our days play and learning, choose how we will be helpful to one another, review the previous days events and ready our minds to receive and give.
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After all the circle time activities and "preschool time" we continue our learning outdoors. This is, of course, weather permitting. There are MANY opportunities for science and discovery, as well as, continued enrichment in our outdoor "classroom." This includes music and movement, math and tactile training, and simply soaking in the warm sun, fresh air and cool breezes...relaxation.
This sets the stage for moving into a peace filled lunchtime and then a refreshing nap.
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Once awake we bounce into our afternoon snack. This takes us to our afternoon "wrap it up" meeting time.
We review the day's events, the letter of the day, numbers, shapes, colors and concepts we have been learning throughout our planned and free playtimes. This is also a time for reflection regarding our social/emotional trials and triumphs and provides another opportunity for additional storytimes, fingerplay songs and puppet theater. After a boisterous day filled with bustle many of our children opt for some self-directed pretend and play for the remainder of their day at Woolsey Academy For Young Learners.
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