Nature's Way of Learning
A Veterans Owned Company
Our Curriculum
When building the center, we wanted to create a space where children not only felt loved and respected, but we wanted to create a center where children could learn from each other, their teachers and the world around them!
Nursery- Waddlers uses a creative curriculum
Toddlers-Pre School-Two used an emersion curriculum
Pre-K used Learning Without Teacher Pre-K. This is the same curriculum “brand” the Merrimack Public School uses for kindergarten.
We offer gentle encouragement to try new activities as well as to expand their minds through hands-on educational activities and free play. Students learn best when they can be creative and when they have choices. We offer structured schedules in our Waddler-Pre-K classrooms. Schedules and structure allow children to know what comes next. It helps with anxiety and to keep a safe school.
Our school focuses on:
Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills work those little muscle around our bodies, but mostly our hands. We start these skills as infants while learning to pick up items using the pincher grasp, to being in PK to decorate a beautiful dragonfly while lacing beads for the body.
Gross Motor Skills
While fine motor skills work our little muscles, gross motor skills are our large muscles. This still is one of the most important from learning how to sit up as an infant to learning how to run, jump and climbing. We will keep those muscles moving with our 2 large playgrounds.
Sensory
Sensory exploration is all around us. From the way an object feels to the way food tastes. Sensory is a big part of our day from digging in sand and making a castle, to making cinnamon scented playdough.
Loose Parts
Loose parts are one of our favorite places to play. We change this area out monthly with all sorts of items from recycled bottles and tape to make robots, to paper towel rolls to seek and find some birds. This area is endless in possibilities.
Colors and Shapes
Colors- One of our favorite ways to learn colors is to try new foods of that color. Our young rooms learn colors through art and sensory exploration.
Shapes- Shapes are EVERYWHERE. We may point them out during free play to searching the room during a fun game of seek and find.
Handwriting and Letters
Students throughout all classrooms learn this through many activates. For our younger classrooms this means playing with letters in playdough, to writing letters in sand. In our older classrooms, this means learning how to hold writing utensils.
Math
Numbers and Math- This is taught in many ways. While sitting with an infant we may count while stacking blocks to the older classrooms where we count our jumps and use our morning calendar to help us count and learn ABA patterns.
Casue and Affect/ Science
Students learn cause and effect without even knowing. From building a tower that falls down when it gets too big, from what happens when we place warm water outside in the freezing cold air. We use cause an effect for cooking, science, math, and all day long.
Social Studies/ Family Dynamics
This is a great way to introduce different cultures, foods, and to learn about ourselves and families. Throughout the year our Dramatic Play area switches monthly to allow children to be introduced to many different family dynamics as well as allowing them to build upon social skills.
Self-help Skills
Is important to our overall development. Self-help is something we believe strongly in. This comes in many forms from self-feeding, to advocating for ourselves to learning how to use the bathroom.
Art Explortation
How to we grow our minds to express ourselves, we do that through open ended process over product art. Art isn't something we do daily, but a choice children are able to make during free play and group rotations.
Blocks and Cars
This area allows children to test cause and effect, as well as being creative to build with many different items from wooden blocks to legos, to racing cars down PVC pipes for the win.
Most importantly in our curriculum, we teach love, respect and caring for each other and our world. Children here learn to trust their teachers and learn to be kind to friends through sharing and group playtimes. Children are not a one size fits all and we truly encourage them to share their unique personalities with us.
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Outside Time
We have 2 playgrounds. One for Infants-Waddlers and the other Toddlers through School age. Both playgrounds offer a large running space, climbers, swings, building items such as logs, outside block, digging items tunnels and tiers which the children love creating with. We have a paved area for cars and bikes, a large sand area for digging and exploring as well as a grass area to lay in and find shapes in the clouds. We have a circle area and 3 outside tables for eating and crafting.
During the summer months we do many waterplay activities, from our blow-up water slide to water tables and small toddler pools.