Curriculum and Schedule
Curriculum Framework
Introduction
Brown Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center is a community preschool. Our program is creatively designed to offer full-time, quality education and care in a unique environment that stimulates learning in all areas of a child’s development. Working in teams, teachers blend meaningful learning experiences with nurturance, guidance and affection.
Brown Fox Point’s unique program provides early learning where young children freely develop together in a safe and warm environment. Each teaching team creates a unique curriculum based on the needs and interests of the children in their care. The emergence of curricula in this way makes it unique to each group of children, from classroom to classroom and year to year. It also means that learning experiences are meaningful, child-centered, non-commercialized and individualized.
Although our curriculum is unique, individualized, and emergent, teachers plan learning experiences on distinct principles essential to age-appropriateness in early childhood settings. All of the teachers use play-based activities, hands-on tasks and direct experiences that enable children to begin to construct a working knowledge of the world around them. The process of each activity or experience is the focal point of its implementation, not the product. Process-oriented curricula guide children to think, reason, question and learn.
Children participate independently, with the entire group and cooperatively in small groups. Each day is balanced with free-choice time and planned, structured activities in specific time blocks. Activities throughout the day are either child-initiated or teacher-directed. This variety promotes independence, provides opportunities for children to practice and acquire social skills, and fosters the development of a positive self-image. Acquisition of prosocial behaviors permeate our program. Our employees are devoted to using natural and planned opportunities to help children develop problem-solving skills, to learn the importance and experience the benefits of cooperation and to create a true sense of community.
An important component to our program is an appreciation of diversity and the value we place on our anti-bias curriculum. As with other facets of our program, this broadly cultural element is drawn from our diverse population of children and their families. Throughout Brown Fox Point and in everything we do, we view and present diversity as a respectful engagement with people, differences and ways of living. We hope that children will recognize diversity as an essential and valuable part of society.
These principles of child-centered instruction, developmental appropriateness, emergent curricula, active family involvement, engagement with diversity and commitment to socialization enable our program to succeed as we promote the development of the whole child.
Teachers work in teams and as a center-wide faculty each week to design curriculum that responds to the needs and interests of their children. We use the developmental domains identified in the Rhode Island Early Learning and Development Standards (RIELDS) as the basis for our on-going assessments, and we design activities involving dramatic play, sensory activities, writing, scientific experiments, dance, music, mathematical concepts, cooking, walking field trips,and many more with content that engages them. In addition, our teachers meet weekly in curriculum meetings, care coordination meetings and classroom meetings to determine appropriate responses to the individual, emergent needs of each child.
Curriculum Content
What Children Should Know, Understand and Be Able to Do
Our curriculum framework is intended to guide teaching staff as they develop quality-level classroom experiences for children.
Within our curriculum we address the nine Domains of Learning and Development as outlined in the RIELDS, they are as follows:
Social and Emotional Development
Relationships with Others
Sense of Self
Self-regulation
Physical and Motor Health Development
Health and Safety Practices
Gross Motor Development
Fine Motor Development
Language Development
Receptive Language
Expressive Language
Pragmatics
Language Development of Dual Language Learners
Literacy
Phonological Awareness
Alphabet Knowledge
Print Knowledge
Comprehension and Interest
Emergent Writing
Literacy Development for Dual Language Learners
Cognitive Development
Logic and Reasoning
Memory and Working Memory
Attention and Inhibitory Control
Cognitive Flexibility
Mathematics
Number Sense and Quantity
Number Relations and Operations
Classification and Patterning
Measurement, Comparison and Ordering
Geometry and Spatial Sense
Science
Scientific Inquiry and Application
Knowledge of Science Concepts
Social Studies
Self, Family and Community
Self, History and Geography
Creative Arts
Experimentation and Participation in the Creative Arts
Curriculum Context
The Materials, Environment, Daily Schedule, Group Size
Materials and Learning Environments
The Tools and Textbook for Learning
Brown Fox Point creates a safe learning environment where children can actively explore, experiment and discover their surroundings. Our preschool classrooms have a daily schedule that is posted for children and parents, which outline the daily activities. Shelves and learning areas are clearly marked and defined with pictures and words for children. Our classroom set-up includes learning centers, these are as follows:
Art Area
Sensory Tables
Block Area
Manipulatives
Science/Nature
Writing Center
Dramatic Play
Math Area
Group and Music and Movement
Teachers make modifications to their environment to reflect the objectives and goals outlined in their planning, as well as the interests of the children. Our well-planned space encourages children to perform tasks appropriately, demonstrate positive behavior, and encourage their growth and development. Materials are chosen to specifically meet the needs of our children and are easily accessible to our students to ensure appropriate exploration and experimentation. Additionally, they are selected to reflect diversity; are safe, but challenging; promote action and interaction; support independent use, are rich in variety, and accommodate children with special needs. Materials are rotated to reflect the emergent curriculum, and to accommodate new interest and skill levels. Classrooms are designed to have quiet and noisy areas, messy and neat areas, and individual and group areas, which provide opportunities for appropriate and diverse types of play.
Daily, the children have the opportunity to play outdoors for at least 60 minutes in our expansive naturalized playground. Weekly, teachers plan outdoor activities that encourage learning in all of the developmental domains.
Daily Schedule
Routines and Structure
The daily schedule that is outlined below is a general guideline of school-wide practices. The schedule in individual classrooms may vary. Each class has a daily schedule posted.
7:30 - 9:30 a.m. Children arrive at Brown Fox Point with a parent or guardian and go to the appropriate classroom. Learning centers are open for free play and breakfast is available until 9:00 a.m.
9:30 - 10:00 a.m. Children and teachers sit in a circle as a group to discuss the past day’s events, to plan for the current day and to discuss issues that have emerged in the classroom and can benefit from group discussion, writing or drawing.
10:00 a.m.-Noon. Outdoor Play and Center Time. Center Time features developmentally appropriate small group activities, both teacher-directed and child-initiated, that are planned in accordance with Brown Fox Point’s overall philosophy. Center time provides an opportunity for cooperative and independent learning within a developmentally supportive structure. Centers may include art, blocks, science and nature, books, writing, math, sensory tables, dramatic play and music.
Noon - 1:30 p.m. Lunch. Brown Fox Point provides a nutritious lunch every day; menus are made available each month. After lunch, children do things to wind down in preparation for rest, including relaxation exercises, outdoor play and stories.
1:30 - 3:00 p.m. Rest time. All children are encouraged to bring a soft rest toy and some bedding from home to go on their center-provided cots or mats. Children rest quietly with dimmed lights and soft music.
3:00 - 3:30 p.m. Snack. Following rest, children awaken to a nutritious snack and drink.
3:30 - 5:30 p.m. Free choice. The final two hours—during which most children are picked up by their parents or guardians—are usually a flexible time that includes learning centers, games, stories, dancing and outdoor play.
Group Size
Teacher/Child Ratios
Our staffing pattern includes three full-time faculty members per classroom: two lead teachers and one teacher. Each classroom has up to 18 students, giving us a 6:1 student to teacher ratio. This ensures that faculty have the opportunity to facilitate the children’s development individually, and in small and large group activities.
Curriculum Process
Applying Our Knowledge About How Children Learn
Research and Theory
Our curriculum is grounded in research and theory, which informs decision-making in the field of early childhood, and our approach to working with young children. This research indicates that children’s brains are actively growing at a rapid pace during their early years, which are optimal periods for new skills development and learning. To foster this development, children need to be exposed to new experiences.
Brown Fox Point uses research and theory from the following early childhood experts to develop our curriculum.
Jean Piaget
He observed his own children (and their process of making sense of the world around them) and developed a four-stage model of how the mind processes new information:
Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2 years) - Infants build an understanding of themselves and reality through interactions with the environment.
Preoperational Stage (ages 2 to 4) - Children are not able to conceptualize abstractly and need concrete physical situations. Objects are classified in simple ways, especially by important features.
Concrete Operations Stage (ages 7 to 11) - Children begin to think abstractly and conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain their physical experiences.
Formal Operations Stage (starting at ages 11 to 15) - Young people are capable of deductive and hypothetical reasoning. Their ability for abstract thinking is similar to an adult’s
Sara Similansky
Her research outlines the importance of play in children’s learning. She identified four types of play:
Functional Play - Children use their senses and muscles to experiment with materials and learn how things go together.
Constructive Play - Children’s actions are purposeful and directed toward a goal.
Dramatic or Pretend Play - Children typically take on “person-oriented” roles and use real or pretend objects to play out the role.
Games with Rules - Children control their behavior through rules both physically and verbally.
Abraham Maslow
His research described a hierarchy of needs that all people experience, based on meeting basic needs before moving on to the next level of learning. They include:
Physiological needs - hunger, thirst, sleep, etc.
Safety needs - feeling secure and safe, out of danger
Belongingness and love needs - affiliating with others, to be accepted and belong
Esteem needs - achieving, be competent and gain approval
Cognitive needs - to know, understand and explore
Aesthetic needs - symmetry, order and beauty
Self-Actualization - to find self-fulfillment and realize one’s potential
Howard Gardner
He believed childhood intelligence had many forms, including:
Linguistic/verbal intelligence - playing with words and sounds, telling stories, reading and writing
Logical/mathematical intelligence - reasoning and problem solving, exploring patterns and categorizing objects, asking questions and experimenting
Musical/rhythmic intelligence - detecting patterns in music and nature, responding emotionally to music, singing, humming or whistling to themselves
Spatial/visual intelligence - thinking in images, knowing where things are located, fascinated by the way things work
Bodily/kinesthetic intelligence - having good fine motor skills and coordination, learning by moving, like dancing, physically mimicking others
Interpersonal intelligence - having lots of friends, good at resolving conflict, demonstrating leadership and reading people’s emotions
Intrapersonal intelligence - aware of their emotions and expressing their feelings well, requires privacy, understanding their own strengths and challenges
Erik Erickson
He believed external factors impacted childhood development. His psychosocial theory of development has eight stages:
Basic trust vs. mistrust: infancy (birth to 18 months) - development of optimism, trust, confidence and security if properly nurtured by parents; if not, may develop insecurity, worthlessness and general mistrust of the world
Autonomy vs. shame: toddler/early childhood (18 months to 3 years) - build self-esteem and autonomy and learn right from wrong; well-cared for children feel pride rather than shame
Initiative vs. guilt: preschool (3 to 5 years) - copy adults and start taking initiative; make up stories and experiment
Industry vs. inferiority: school age (6 to 12 years) - significant learning and social development; relationships expand to school and neighborhood
Identity vs. role confusion: adolescent (12 to 18 years) - discover identity; develop strong affiliations with ideals, causes and friends
Intimacy and solidarity vs. isolation: early adulthood (18 to 35) - some seek companionship and love through deeper intimacy and satisfying relationships or risk isolation
Generativity vs. self-absorption or stagnation: middle age (35 to 55 or 65) - focus on career and work, along with family; take greater responsibility and control over life
Integrity vs. despair: late adulthood (55 or 65 to death) - reflection, of contentment and fulfillment or failure
Curriculum Teaching and Facilitating
The Various Roles of the Teacher that Support Learning
Instruction and Facilitation
Our teachers recognize that children’s learning styles, interests and developmental levels are unique and as a result provide experiences with provisions for these differences. When teachers provide opportunities within their classrooms, they ensure that those activities are developmentally appropriate and there is a balance between quiet and active activities and individual, small and large group activities. Our teachers use supportive interactions to respond to children, guide appropriate behavior, encourage exploration, and promote social development. Working with the teaching staff are the Executive Director, the Deputy Director/Business Manager, the Education Coordinator and Administrative Coordinator.