PRE-SCHOOL | CURRICULUM

PRE-SCHOOL | PHILOSOPHY

Our philosophy

Our philosophy of learning includes respected and proven early childhood models, based on sound theory and research. These include: Piaget’s theories about children’s construction of knowledge. Vygotsky’s theories of social constructivism, and Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences.

In recent years, a learning approach employed by preschools in the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy has captured the attention of educators from many countries. The Reggio approach is an elegant blend of many complementary theories about child development and learning theory. The influence of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Gardner are included in the Reggio approach.

We implement the Reggio inspired Philosophy, which emphasizes documentation, community collaboration, and respect for the environment and a child’s pace of learning.

Our image of the child is, as the Reggio approach reminds us, “rich in potential, strong, powerful, and competent.”

Parental involvement
| Research tells us that successful schools and successful students have involved parents. We consider this an essential component of our program. Parent involvement takes many forms, including: day-to-day interaction, special events, field trips, celebrations, and parent meetings, among others. Parents and teachers work in partnership, teachers communicate regularly to build mutual understanding and greater consistency for the children.

Please visit the Parents Association area here

Documentation
At Temple Emanu-El Pre-school we use multiple forms of documentation – photographs, audio-tape transcripts, video-tapes, note-taking, and the actual product of a child’s work create a multi-sensory “memory” of an activity. Posting the documentation throughout the school encourages the children to learn from one another and to appreciate the process of creating. Children's interpretation of experience through the visual media are displayed as a graphic presentation of the dynamics of learning.

Documentation communicates the life of the school to others visiting the school. It also provides opportunities for children to revisit the experience. It is a process that involves observation, reflection, collaboration, interpretation, analysis, and is made a part of the bulletin boards, along with pictures of children engaged in experiences, their words as they discuss what they are doing.