As each teacher translates our philosophy into the day-to-day planning process to design and plan classroom activities, we keep the following statements in mind with respect to different content areas in the curriculum.

Ecological Responsibility

As members of the ECDC community, children have the opportunity to develop a sense of responsibility for each other and their natural environment and resources. Gardening, recycling, and care of the physical and natural environment are an increasing part of our curriculum as we look for ways to help children develop an awareness of the importance of a sustainable and ecologically respectful global environment.

Social Studies

Childrens’ awareness of themselves and the world is developed by establishing respectful and supportive classroom communities that focus on the sharing of cultures, customs, language, and traditions of the families in the class. They learn about their immediate world with many field trips, experiences, and interactions with people and places in the local community.

Language Arts & Emergent Literacy

Literacy develops through experiences and practice with both expressive (speaking and writing) and receptive (listening and reading)language. Making extensive use of high-quality, culturally responsive literature, modeling, recording, and revisiting conversations and discussions, and generating literacy products such as books, charts, and letters, enables children to progress from the acquisition of language to the productive use of oral and written language to express original ideas.

Physical Development

Physical development occurs both naturally through various kinds of play and intentionally by planning opportunities and activities to strengthen and refine fine and gross motor skills. Physical experiences develop the child’s body coordination, balance, agility, and spatial awareness.

Creative Arts

Recognizing that supporting and encouraging creativity is important for the development of the whole child, children need frequent opportunities to express and explore their ideas in many ways. They need exposure to a wide variety of flexible materials that can be used in different ways. The arts are a primary means by which cultures represent their history, achievements, and values; therefore, exposure to a wide variety of visual arts, music, dramatic, and movement activities is essential. They are the “hundred languages of children.” (Gandini, Forman, & Edwards, 1994; 2004).

Math

Children acquire fundamental mathematical concepts, logical thinking, and problem solving through the manipulation of materials and application of skills and concepts to real life situations. Concepts learned through work with manipulatives, block-building, sand and water play, and problem posing/solving embedded in group project work include one-to-one correspondence, patterning, counting, sorting, comparing, shape recognition, addition, and subtraction.

Science

Children are naturally curious about the natural world and their environment and develop science process skills through observing, classifying, measuring, communicating, inferring, predicting, and experimenting with familiar objects, animals, and natural processes. Experimenting, learning through trial-and-error, hypothesizing, and developing systematic inquiry processes take time and repeated opportunities to discover how things move, grow, and change.

Social/Emotional Competence

The learning environment should encourage development of childrens’ positive self-concepts by enabling them to cope with setbacks and frustrations without losing self-confidence. Children are supported as they learn to make choices, assume responsibility, become independent, express feelings and needs in words, and participate in creating and abiding by the rules established for behavior in the classroom environment. ECDC children learn to respect others’ feelings, choices, and opinions.

Health & Safety

Through adult modeling and practice, children learn health and safety concepts such as personal hygiene, playground and classroom safety and emergency preparedness. These are reinforced in daily routine. Cooking and serving healthy snacks and encouraging parents to prepare balanced lunches emphasize proper nutrition.