How our students learn:
Curriculum
The educational foundation of LEP is The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool. This comprehensive, research-based curriculum features exploration and discovery as a way of learning, enabling children to develop confidence, creativity, and lifelong critical thinking skills. This curriculum guides our play-based environment and helps our teachers plan and implement a quality, content-rich preschool program for our students (source: Teaching Strategies). And, the most exciting part for our little explorers is that they get to play and explore while learning and growing!
We also draw from the Zoo-phonics® and Handwriting Without Tears® curricula, which are used in our local public school district. We have found that incorporating these into our program helps better prepare our students for language and literacy learning in Kindergarten and beyond because the techniques and skills are familiar.
The Zoo-phonics® Multisensory Language Arts Program is a kinesthetic, multi-modal approach to learning all aspects of language arts, including vocabulary development and articulation, based on phonics and phonemic awareness (source: Zoo Phonics).
The Handwriting Without Tears® curriculum provides developmentally appropriate, multisensory strategies for early writing. Through playing, singing, and building letters, students develop the important skills they need to print words. Lessons address grip, letter and number recognition, and capital and number formation (source: Learning Without Tears).
The daily schedule of each class includes whole group activities, circle time, learning center time, snack, and outdoor/gross motor playtime. The LEP classroom is equipped with a variety of learning centers, including art, building/construction, sensory play, dramatic play, games and puzzles, and language/literacy.
For more information, check out these resources:
The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool
Zoo-phonics®
Handwriting Without Tears®
