Educational Goals
Comprehensive, optimum development of each child: mind, body, social self, and character:
- Preparation for success in life
- Approaching life as an invitation to learn
- Becoming a confident and competent lifelong learner
- Becoming a confident and competent user of technology
- Developing emotional intelligence: personal power and social skills
- Preparation for academic excellence
- Developing the social and cognitive skills necessary for school success
- Achieving excellence in language and literacy
- Developing an engaged, reflective, inquisitive mind and appreciation of science
- Achieving excellence in logical/mathematical understanding
- A rich and rewarding childhood
- Happy days
- Wonderful relationships
- A World of experience
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Program Description
An Invitation to Learn for Children and Adults
A Bright Horizons Family Center is a community of learning and caring, where new ideas and practices are valued. Children are not the only ones developing at a Bright Horizons Family Center; teachers and parents grow as well. The World at Their Fingertips program for learning thrives on the new interests and expertise that teachers and parents bring to the center.
Each Bright Horizons Family Center is encouraged to extend and enhance The World at Their Fingertips, staying within the overall approach. For example, aspects of the approach of Reggio Emilia, Montessori, or Waldorf Schools can be used to add richness to The World at Their Fingertips at a Bright Horizons Family Center. Centers are expected to take advantage of the world outside their center and to be part of their communities, taking advantage of local resources and culture.
The Infant and Toddler Program
Bright Horizons Family Solutions recognizes that the first two years of life are an extraordinary time that sets the stage for all the years that follow.
During these years, children need to acquire what psychologist Erik Erikson called "basic trust," a pervasive sense of the essential trustworthiness of oneself and others. It is the sense of safety and security that comes from responsive, predictable care from familiar people to whom one is attached. Without this sense, the world is far too scary a place to cope with and learn about.
Each child also needs to develop a sense of autonomy, the sense of being a separate, independent self that comes from being treated as an important individual and being allowed increasing opportunities for independence. The "no" of toddlers is an assertion of autonomy that leads to freely saying "yes" and developing the power to begin to control their bodies and feelings. Only when children personally feel a sense of personal power ("I can affect things"), are they ready to move to the next critical level - a sense of competence ("I can achieve things") as they step out into the wider world as active learners and problem-solvers.
The child's first two years are critical for the development of the brain and language development. During this period, the child's life experience plays a fundamental role in the "hard-wiring" of the brain, laying the foundation for all intellectual and emotional development to follow. From birth, babies are marvelous learners, immediately investigating the sights, sounds, and feel of the world. Long before walking and talking, they are exploring their own bodily powers and what the world has to offer. They need a safe world rich with opportunities to actively explore and enjoy: to see, hear, feel, touch and move. They need a world filled with responsive interactions and language: many "conversations" with others, books (for even the youngest babies), songs, and a great deal of listening and responding to their vocalizations and words. The infant, toddler and two-year-old program for learning is based on the book Prime Times: A Handbook for Excellence in Infant and Toddler Programs, 2nd Edition (Jim Greenman, Anne Stonehouse, and Gigi Schweikert). The program includes:
Heart to Heart: The First Year of Life
The first year of life is a critical time for development. It is responsive, language-rich attention that follows the child's lead that is essential to optimize development. Recent studies demonstrate that both psychological and neurological development depend on responsive stimulation. At a Bright Horizons Family Center, teachers and parents work together to ensure responsive caregiving for each child. The program provides:
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Personal Care Plans:
Parents and the primary caregiver establish a personal care plan that is continually updated to ensure that care routines are personalized "prime times" that fit the child and family.
- Heart to Heart:
Very young babies spend time each day "heart to heart" with their primary caregiver. Every sound and movement of the baby is met with a warm response: a word, a smile, a touch that signals, "You are special."
- Parents Prime Time:
Teachers understand that the parent-child relationship is primary and parents are encouraged to call anytime with ideas, questions, or concerns.
- Teamwork:
Teachers in the homebase systematically observe and share observations to ensure that each baby's cues, needs, and strengths are recognized and understood and that care is responsive.
- Let's Read:
Long before they understand the words and pictures, infants benefit from the joy of sharing a book in the arms of a caring adult. Reading begins with young babies and gains momentum as the child matures. On laps, on the floor, and as they drift off to sleep, infants and toddlers experience the magic and wonder of books.
My Place to Grow
Infants and toddlers are sensory motor beings. They explore the world with their senses and developing motor skills. Long before they understand concepts like "under" or "far" with their minds, their bodies are learning to navigate the up and down, over and under of the physical world. Their perceptions are sorting out sizes, colors, and shapes. The curriculum provides infants and toddlers with a rich learning environment with appropriate learning centers planned and organized to maximize:
- Large and Small Motor Experiences:
For younger babies: reaching, grasping, kicking, holding, pulling and standing, creeping and crawling in, out, over, under. For toddlers: gripping, throwing, manipulating, walking, climbing, pushing, pulling, etc.
- Sensory Experiences:
Explorations of texture, color, patterns, size and shape, smell, taste, weight.
- Cognitive Experiences:
Object permanence, spatial relationships, classifying, collecting and dumping, cause and effect experiences, problem-solving.
- Language and Music:
Adult-child conversations, reading and language play, explorations in music, rhyming, and sound explorations.
- Personal Expression:
Art, movement, imitation and beginning dramatic play, doll and stuffed animal play.
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The Twos Program
The World of Twos reflects the transitional nature of the child's third year of life. The program is designed for each child to transition from the sensory-motor world of toddlers to an increasingly social world and the onset of symbolic thinking. Terrific twos are exploding in their power to communicate, to move purposely, to assert their independence and individuality, and to control their important bodily functions. The twos' experience is similar to adolescence in that it is transitional. In the same way that adolescence stands between childhood and adulthood, twos straddle the total dependence of babyhood and the more independent, mobile world of preschoolers. Like teenagers, twos are often frustrated with being "in between." They swing back and forth and often are conflicted by what they really want to do. Their imagination and desire often exceed their competence. Twos need manageable challenges and mastery experience designed for them as individuals. They need a relaxed environment that allows for frequent changes in moods, interests, and capabilities. Twos, in particular, need teachers to be learning consultants who accept them in their entire inconsistent behavior, setting limits calmly and firmly when necessary.
The twos learning environment is based on both the learning centers outlined in Prime Times and those in the Creative Curriculum. At the core of both Prime Times and the Creative Curriculum (Dodge, Colker, & Heroman; Teaching Strategies, Inc.) are well-planned learning centers that allow for child choice and self-directed play, small groups, and supportive teaching that prepares children for future academic excellence. The twos environment recognized that two-year-old's need for movement and sensory exploration. Changes to the learning environment, activities, and projects reflect emerging interests and individual goals. Learning centers offer guided experiences that encompass all the skills and understandings necessary for optimum development and success in school.
Typical centers may include:
| Language/Library | Action/Movement | Vehicle Center |
| Construction/Blocks | Discovery/Science | Music |
| Housekeeping/Dramatic Play | Outdoor Learning | Table Toys/Manipulatives |
| Art/Creative Expression | Climbing Area | Sensory: Sand and Water |
Learning centers are supplemented by any number of independent learning stations designed for use by one or two children, for example:
| Playdough Station | Body-image Station |
| Play Animal Station | Costume Station |
Throughout the day, children make self-directed and guided choices, participate in small groups and projects, join in very brief circle times with the whole group, and reflect upon and document their learning experiences in developmentally appropriate modes. Children are guided to critical learning experiences that form the building blocks of healthy development. Using Primes Times, the Creative Curriculum, and knowledge of the children and knowledge of the children and families as a framework, teachers use their talent and expertise to design, adapt, and invent learning centers that best serve the children in the room.
The Twos Program incorporates World elements - Language Works, Math Counts, Science Rocks, Projections, Our World, Well Aware and ArtSmart - into the environment, daily activities, and projects that organize the children's experience.
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The Preschool Program
The Preschool Program is a comprehensive program. The learning environment is primarily based on The Creative Curriculum, developed by Teaching Strategies Inc, in use in high-quality early education settings throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. Because young children learn best through active interaction with the physical and social environment, the curriculum is focused on developing an experientially rich, developmentally appropriate environment that responds to the creativity of children and teachers. At the core of the Creative Curriculum lie well planned learning centers that allow for child choice and self-directed play, small groups, and supportive teaching designed to ensure future academic success. The development of language, mathematical reasoning, and scientific thought are emphasized throughout the centers. Changes to the learning environment, activities, and projects reflect emerging interests. Learning centers result in the guided experiences that encompass all the skills and understandings necessary for optimum development and success in school.
Typical centers include:
| Language/Library | Computers | Construction/Blocks |
| Cooking | Dramatic Play | Outdoor Learning |
| Art/Creative Expression | Music and Movement | Sensory: Sand and Water |
| Manipulatives | |
Learning centers are supplemented by any number of independent learning stations designed for use by one or two children.
Throughout the day, children make self-directed and guided choices using Choice Systems, participate in small groups and projects, join in circle-times with the whole group, and reflect upon and document their learning experiences. Teachers build upon, rather than direct or control, the thoughts and actions of children. Children are guided to critical learning experiences that form the building blocks of healthy development. Using the Creative Curriculum and knowledge of the children and families as a framework, teachers use their talent and expertise to design, adapt, and invent learning centers that best serve the children in the room.
The Preschool Program incorporates Language Works, Math Counts, Science Rocks, Our World, Well Aware and ArtSmart into the environment, daily activities, and projects that organize the children's experience.
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The Kindergarten Program
The developmental kindergarten curriculum recognizes that children will soon be entering schools that have clear expectations of child readiness. The curriculum is a comprehensive approach that challenges children and supports all areas of development. Each Bright Horizons Family Center Kindergarten develops expectations in concert with the local schools that children will be attending. The curriculum builds off the child's knowledge and skill base, learning style, and interests. There is a clear emphasis on the development of strong language and math skills. Important "school skills" of listening carefully, following through on a sequence of tasks, and working cooperatively are reinforced as children are engaged in projects and daily activities. The curriculum extends from the planned child-choice learning environment (utilizing the Creative Curriculum) and incorporates Language Works, Math Counts, Science Rocks, Our World, ArtSmart, Well Aware and Projections to offer each child a kindergarten curriculum designed for school success.
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The School-Age Program
School-age children are enrolled in Bright Horizon Family Centers that offer before- and after-school care, back-up care for school holidays and school closing days, and summer day camp programs for children up to age 12. School-age children in child care need the opportunity to live and learn in a relaxed, "un-school like" setting. The World School-Age Program recognizes the growing physical, intellectual, and social competence of school-age children. Eager to explore the social world and discover how the adult world works, six- to twelve-year-olds thrive on challenges, friendships, clubs, and responsibility. They want to make things, build things, act out new dramatic possibilities, explore computers and books, construct imaginary worlds with dolls or Legos and most important, not be given more of the same and be treated like "little kids." They want to discover who they are and pursue their interests. World reinforces their drive to learn with new challenges and opportunities to get out into the world.
Before- and After-School Programs offer a relaxed, balanced program with time to play and learn with friends, finish homework, and let off steam. Back-Up Care and the Summer Day Camp programs, Our World/Our Backyard and Camp Explorations, offer a wealth of enrichment activities, sports, and field trips, from river tubing to horseback riding, from computer explorations to theater workshops. At a Bright Horizon Family Center, you may find school-age children creating a magazine or a video, playing chess or shooting hoops, tutoring each other or forming a club (linked by computer to a club 1000 miles away). Teachers are there alongside, facilitating, guiding and understanding that learning does not have to take on the tone and texture of a school day. The World School-Age Program first and foremost is fun.
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The Multi-Age Approach to Back-up Care Program
Back-up Care is designed for children who may be first-time, or infrequent users of the program. Bright Horizons Family Solutions recognizes that back-up care is a special kind of care for young children. They need to feel safe and secure among people who understand what it is like to be a young child in an unfamiliar place. World provides an especially warm, inviting place where children (and parents) immediately feel welcome and special. A primary caregiver is assigned to each child and family to ensure individualized care, good communication, and parent-caregiver partnership. The World learning environment is designed to be very clear and engaging and offer opportunities for play and discovery not found at home. The family atmosphere allows and encourages children of different ages to work and play together. Some of the features found in many children's museums are incorporated into the Family Center Back-up experience. Special features include:
Welcome Back Greeting and Departure Rituals:
Each child (and parent) on return is welcomed back and departs with special rituals.
- My Day: Each child leaves with a daily experience sheet recording the day's activities for parents. Older children document their own daily experience.
- What's Happening Here?: Special learning centers for children in back-up care are designed to engage the child immediately.
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Language Works
A Comprehensive Language Approach
Language Works is a comprehensive language approach that infuses The World at Their Fingertips. Young children need a world rich in spoken and written language. A whole language approach involves children in continual learning about language as it becomes meaningful to them. Long before learning to read, children are immersed in language activities that lead to a lifelong appreciation and respect for the power and beauty of language. Language is a vital part of every interaction, every aspect of curriculum, every day. Words spoken aloud and in print are respected and enjoyed, for their power, beauty, and utility - as a means to order and understand the world.
Language Works engages children in a continuum of language experiences that challenge their emerging skills and knowledge. Rhyming with toddlers, puppet shows, creating a homebase newspaper in a pre-kindergarten class, composing Haiku with kindergartners, acting out plays, and corresponding with national (and international) pen pals are all a part of the magic of Language Works.
In the Language Works approach, teachers are trained to be alert for opportunities to extend the children's ideas and interests into opportunities to read, write, speak or listen. Language is in the air, and the sounds, meanings, and pure joy of words vibrate throughout the center. Look around and you will see books, signs, posters, labels, directions, and the stories of children. You will see and hear conversations of adults listening to children, enjoying poetry and fingerplays, children making and listening to tapes, and older children reading to younger children. Children will be writing, typing, and using the computer. Even toddlers and twos will compose stories for teacher scribes and "write" their own versions.
Recognizing that children and families are not all the same, Language Works assumes that that no one approach to reading works for all children. Teachers work closely with families to make sure each child is successful in developing strong literacy skills.
Language Works extends into the child's home in the acknowledgement of the critical importance that parents play as the child's first and most important teacher. We encourage and support parent's efforts though information, materials, and shared expectations for extensive, quality, language interactions.
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Math Counts
Enriched Experiences in Mathematics
The World at Their Fingertips includes an emphasis on developing a solid foundation in mathematical skills and reasoning. Math Counts is an approach that encourages all of the adults in the child's life to look for and create opportunities to help children understand the math inherent in their everyday lives. From a toddler's conception of more cookies to the one-to-one correspondence in setting a table, children are helped to become increasingly competent in numerical skills and reasoning. Math Counts establishes learning centers, projects, activities, and guidelines for teacher interactions that all promote the developmental growth necessary for success in school. Children learn number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, seriation, ordination, and other fundamental math skills.
As with Language Works, Math Counts recognizes that parents are the primary intellectual influence on children. We encourage and support parent's efforts to promote the child's greater understanding of mathematical principles and the use of numbers to navigate an increasingly complicated world.
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Science Rocks
Enriched Experiences in Science and Technology
The World at Their Fingertips includes an ever-growing collection of science and discovery opportunities. Science Rocks makes science come alive by taking advantage of the child's experience with science in daily life: the physics of falling blocks, the chemistry of mixing paint or frost on the windows, or the biology of growing plants and animals. Science Rocks includes special learning centers and learning stations, projects, activities, and guidelines for teacher interactions that stimulate a child's sense of wonder and challenge a child's problem-solving skills. Science Rocks encourages children to observe, question, experiment, and reflect.
Science Rocks activities include experiments from raising butterflies and frogs, to tending rabbits, snakes, and mourning doves. Preschool children may be measuring rainfall or shadows, growing and weighing a "crop" of beans or sunflowers, or timing the evaporation of a wet footprint. Toddlers and twos may watch chickens hatch, play games with shadows, or make music with wind chimes. Kindergarten children explore seasons on the Internet with children in Australia back from their summer Christmas vacation or discuss 24-hour sunlight with Inuit children in Kotzebue, Alaska. On field trips and at the center, computers, microscopes, tape measures, and even video cameras help children explore and communicate the mysteries of the forces, properties, and principles of the world around them.
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Projections
Creative Project Learning
Projects take the child beyond the usual child care time and space, outside of the tidy framework of a work time or day, and beyond the limits of learning centers. A project is an adventure in learning fueled by the children's interests and enthusiasm for making sense of their experience; an in-depth study of an idea, topic, or phenomenon that a group or an individual child finds interesting.
Project work is important to enhance and complement what children learn from spontaneous play and instruction. Projects broaden and deepen the children's understanding, sending them off to explore how the world works and apply emerging skills and understandings. Projects are filled with problems to solve; hypotheses to be tested, charted, graphed, or pictured; and discoveries to be communicated.
Projects are possible with almost all ages. Two-years-olds may investigate the mysteries of weather over a few days. A group of preschoolers may spend a week creating a dinosaur habitat or a quilt. Kindergarten children may construct an inflatable dome, in the process learning about volume, air pressure, and adhesives. School-age children's projects may extend over weeks or even months on an infinite number of topics, such as putting on a play or creating a restaurant. Projects may involve desktop publishing, sales and banking, as well as a huge amount of delicate social negotiation. In all projects, planning and communication of activities and results extend the learning far beyond the specific topic. Documentation by teachers and children is an essential element in the project process that ensures reflective, critical thinking.
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Our World
Appreciating Diversity and Care for the Environment
Our World characterizes the Bright Horizons Family Center's commitment to instill in each child a respect for all living things and the environment we inhabit. Our World recognizes and values the rich cultural heritage that people bring to the center. We understand that individuals belong to communities and develop within a culture.
Our World is a vital part of The World at Their Fingertips and includes materials depicting people from many different places doing many different things, and people with all sorts of abilities and challenges living their lives. Books, music, games, learning centers, enrichment programs, and a wide range of activities help children learn respect for Our World, its diverse people, and the environment in which we live. Children experience the sights, sounds, and textures of other cultures and are encouraged to explore experiences that might not be part of their everyday lives.
Multicultural education and respect for diversity is more than teaching information directly. The Our World approach is designed to encourage teachers to move beyond teaching awareness of other cultures to providing experiences that help children understand the ideas and issues presented by diversity at their individual developmental level. Our World creates and maintains an environment that says, "everybody is welcome here, everyone can feel at home here" (parents as well as children). As they participate in group living and special activities, children learn about respect and fairness, tolerance and acceptance, and to value their own culture and their own individual qualities. The Our World sensibility encourages children to notice and think about injustice, and challenges them to do something about unfairness toward people in the world.
Respect for the natural world is also an important element of the Our World approach. Children are taught to respect all living things and the environment we inhabit. They learn about conservation of resources through the practices of the center and through special activities and projects.
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Toward a Better World
Helping Children Make a Difference is a curriculum component of Our World that provides teachers with guidance on supporting children’s development of empathy, compassion and social awareness. Toward a Better World offers service opportunities to children and families through center/school and home activities and projects. In Toward a Better World, we explore how children develop empathy and compassion including the variety of ways that teachers and parents can facilitate these emerging dispositions. Ideas for specific projects and activities for the center/school and home and an annotated bibliography are also included.
Toward a Better World is a project-based curriculum framework (part of Our World) for young children and the adults in their lives living in a multicultural world. It is designed to create experiences that help children understand the world they inhabit, and develop and act upon a sense of responsibility and compassion for people here and abroad.
Click here to learn more about the Toward a Better World curriculum and to explore family activities and children’s books about compassion, social awareness, and giving back.
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Well Aware
The Bright Horizons Approach to Health, Fitness and Wellness
Well Aware is designed to foster positive attitudes towards healthy living through modeling, experience, and activity. Teachers promote an understanding of how health and fitness impact our sense of well-being and fitness. Well Aware involves creating environments, providing activities, establishing family partnerships, and modeling behavior so children may incorporate healthful habits into their daily routines. Well Aware is the Bright Horizons approach that supports and facilitates ways that adults and children can incorporate healthy choices into their daily lives.
With a focus on education and modeling, teachers help children gain an understanding and awareness of how their bodies work, what their bodies need, and how to protect them. Early education teachers are in a uniquely influential place to promote an understanding of what contributes to wellness. Well Aware involves creating environments, providing activities, establishing family partnerships, modeling behavior, and promoting healthy values so children may incorporate healthful habits into their daily routines. The Well Aware sensibility and practices are an integral part of the Bright Horizons culture.
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Art Smart
Appreciating the Arts
ArtSmart is a recognition that young children can develop an appreciation of art, music, theater, and dance. Comprehensive education includes learning to distinguish and enjoy the artistic expression of quality artists: the distinctly different visions of a Monet and a Jackson Pollock, the dance of Alvin Ailey and Swan Lake, the music of Mozart and Gershwin, and the drama inherent in the best of children's literature.
ArtSmart takes advantage of local and national resources to introduce children to artists of all kinds and seeks to uncover the children's unique talents to both appreciate and express artistic vision.
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A Brief Q & A for Parents About World Curriculum
About the Educational Goals
How does The World at Their Fingertips accomplish its goals?
- A carefully planned learning environment organized for child choice, discovery, exploration, challenge, and mastery of emerging skills
- Planned daily activities and projects that reflect the children's emerging interests and skills
- Planned enrichment activities that take advantage of local resources
- Individual goals and planning with parents for each child
- A team approach. The curriculum and each child's educational experience is a product of the entire BFAM team: national, regional, and center leadership, as well as homebase staff
- Teachers guide the exploration, discovery, and mastery experiences by mentoring children, recognizing the "learnable moment," and providing encouragement and appropriate challenge
- Documenting the child's and the group's experiences and communicating to parents
- Partnering with parents to evaluate and plan the child's experience
About Preparation for Academic Excellence
What do children need to excel in school? How are they going to get that at a Bright Horizons Family Center?
Children need to enter school with all the skills and the desire to think for themselves, solve problems, work with others, learn in a school setting, communicate, and gain an increasing understanding of the world and how it works:
Every child needs to be ready to read: armed with the desire, the vocabulary, and the language deciphering skills that they have learned through language experiences that are meaningful to them.
Every child needs to approach the world with both wonder and the knowledge and skills that lead to success in math and science: a growing interest in the properties of things and the relationships and forces that exist in the natural world.
Every child needs the social skills to perform in a school classroom, whether that classroom is developmentally appropriate or not: listening skills, self-discipline, patience, discipline to the task, ability to work with others, and the ability to solve problems.
Why doesn't Bright Horizons emphasize early academics?
Because we want to prepare children for academic excellence and help them to develop to their full potential. Almost all developmental psychologists and educators agree that the best preparation for success in school for preschool children is not academics that push traditional schooling downward- direct instruction and drill in reading, writing, and arithmetic and filling children with information. Rather, it is hands-on guided experience and the expectation that children develop the love of learning, language, intellectual, psychological and social skills required to navigate the school process. The gains achieved in direct instruction are narrow, short lived, and do not prepare children well for academic excellence.
How do we prepare children for academic excellence?
We have high expectations for children and we recognize the unique qualities of each child. Beginning in the infant program and continuing throughout the program, The World at Their Fingertips learning environment emphasizes a language rich environment, a scientific approach to discovery (question, experiment, reflect, articulate your understanding), and expectations for child behavior that provide the social skills that promote performance in school. While academic instruction typically is designed to fill children's heads with information, we help them develop information-gathering and problem-solving skills using the tools they need to master: their minds and bodies, books, computers, and scientific instruments.
What we see often looks just like play. Why is it valuable? How do children learn through play?
Play - exploration, discovery, pretending, imitating, practicing, and constructing - is how children learn what the world is made of, how it works, and their own relationship to it:
Functional play is where children explore and examine the function and characteristics of objects.
Constructive play is where they use objects to construct things and order their universe, using pre-math skills and trial by error.
Play with rules - games - requires children to concentrate, understand limits, and shape their behavior in accordance with external rules and other individuals.
Pretend play is where children use their knowledge, imagination, and intellectual skills to take on roles and reenact what they have experienced.
In all societies, play has a critical role in development and early education. How does play lead to academic success? All play is not equal. In a rich learning environment with skilled and caring adults, children are challenged to become increasingly sophisticated researchers and meaning-makers - messy little scientists and social communicators. These are skills necessary for school success. For instance, when a child pretends, she uses mental pictures and symbols to represent real objects and events she has come to understand through play. Later on in studying history, or solving problems in chemistry or math, she will need a sophisticated ability to create and manipulate mental images, symbols, and scenarios. When a child builds a block structure, she will use practical mathematics and physics to understand practical concepts that she will need later to understand and manipulate cognitively. The social play of children requires the skills and understanding that develop into emotional intelligence: self control, empathy, self respect, and self motivation.
Why the World Curriculum?
Montessori programs are based on Maria Montessori. What theory or research do you base your World program on?
The World at Their Fingertips is based on the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Eric Erickson, and Howard Gardner. It draws from current research on learning and development, including the important concepts of emotional intelligence and multiple intelligences. The key concepts are:
- Children are active learners who construct meaning through experience.
- Intelligence is not a single, unified, cognitive construct. There are multiple intelligences. The question is not "How smart is this child?" but rather "How is this child smart?"
- The development of intellect is a social phenomenon. Social experience shapes the way we see and interpret the world. Language plays a critical role because it is our primary avenue of communication and mental contact with others, the major means by which experience is represented psychologically, and an indispensable tool for thought.
- Development is not a race and earlier is generally not better in motor development, reading, and most other developmental areas.
- Based on the development of the brain, there are optimum periods for learning, particularly acquiring a facility for language and second language acquisitions. A rich language environment is essential in the first five years of life.
- Early education is not about didactic instruction and information: it is about hands-on experience with the world of people, things, concepts and mentoring adults who help children understand how the world works and all that they are capable of and provide children the opportunity for reflection on their experience. It is about discovering skills and knowledge, challenge and mastery, and developing emotional intelligence. All play is not equal and the early childhood educator's job is to provide the most educationally appropriate environment and to mentor the child.
A teacher's job is to plan for and recognize the "learnable moment," or what Vygotsky calls the Zone of Proximal Development: the hypothetical, dynamic region where development takes place. It is the distance between what a child can accomplish during independent problem solving and what he or she can accomplish with the help of an adult or more competent member of the culture.
Why not use Montessori or Waldorf or another curriculum?
There is no "best" curriculum for young children. Both Montessori and Waldorf are wonderful alternatives. In fact, we also offer Bright Horizons Montessori programs. The World at Their Fingertips is our customized approach that helps prepare children for success in school and life at our centers throughout the world. It is practical, achievable, and based on solid research and theory.
What is emotional intelligence and why is it an important concept in World?
Emotional intelligence is a recognition that our achievements our success at life and school depend on much more than our IQ, our intellectual capacity. Research has demonstrated that the dispositions and behaviors that constitute emotional intelligence predict success in life better than IQ. Based on the work of Yale Psychologist Peter Salovey and others, there are five primary parts to emotional intelligence:
- Knowing one's emotions:
Self-awareness, or the ability to recognize a feeling as it happens is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence. Being aware of our moods and our thoughts and feelings about our moods is necessary to manage emotions and focus our efforts.
- Managing emotions:
Managing feelings so that they lead to appropriate behavior is a critical ability that builds on self-awareness. The ability to forestall panic, shake off gloom and anxiety, avoid despair, and move beyond sadness and grief is essential to move forward and be productive. When emotions overwhelm concentration, working memory - the ability to hold and use relevant information to the task - is diminished. The degree to which our emotions get in the way and block our working memory, or work for us to enhance our ability to think, plan, and persist with enthusiasm, defines the limits of the use of our mental capacities.
- Motivating oneself:
Marshalling emotions in service of a goal is essential for paying attention, self-motivation, mastery, and creativity. Enthusiasm and persistence in the face of anxiety, fear, and setbacks set apart achievers. Believing that you possess the will and the way to master events is a critical predictor of success in school and life.
- Recognizing emotion in others:
Empathy, building on emotional self-awareness and applying it to others, is the fundamental people skill, the key ingredient in interpersonal intelligence.
- Handling relationships:
The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing the emotions of others.
(From: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman)
The World at Their Fingertips is designed to help children develop their emotional intelligence to the fullest by organizing the program to expect child responsibility and providing teachers who support and mentor children.
What is the concept of multiple intelligence?
For years, developmental psychologists have been dissatisfied with the concept of intelligence as a unified construct. Howard Gardner has been the leading exponent of the concept that there are multiple intelligences. Intelligence is defined as:
- The ability to solve problems that one encounters in real life.
- The ability to generate new problems to solve.
- The ability to make something or offer service that is valued within one's culture.
Everyone possesses eight intelligences; however some intelligences are stronger than others, and the profile of intelligences varies from person to person. A recognition of multiple intelligences leads to shifting the question from "How smart is this child" to "How is this child smart?" and how can we use this intelligence to help the child succeed in school and life?
- Linguistic intelligence - Capacity to use language orally and in writing
- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence - The capacity to use numbers and reason effectively
- Spatial Intelligence - The ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations upon those perceptions
- Bodily Kinesthetic Intelligence - The ability to use one's whole body to express ideas and feelings and to use one's hands to produce or transform things
- Musical Intelligence - The capacity to perceive, discriminate, transform, and express musical forms
- Naturalist Intelligence - The ability to understand and appreciate the natural world and observe, understand, and organize patterns in the natural environment
- Interpersonal Intelligence - The ability to perceive and make distinctions in the moods, intentions, motivations, and feelings of other people
- Intrapersonal Intelligence - Self-knowledge and the ability to adapt behavior on the basis of that knowledge
(From: Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner)
About School Readiness:
What do preschool children need in order to learn how to read and become lifelong readers?
Children who excel in academics learn to speak, read, and write in an environment that values written and spoken language, treasures books, and immerses them in language interactions. They learn to construct meaning from print in the years before school. They need to be read to, read with, see adults reading, have books and magazines to read alone, and they need to read labels, lists, and signs. They need to sing, chant, rhyme, hear poems, and be with adults who help them recognize the sounds in spoken language. They need to write notes, captions, stories, and their name, beginning with pretend writing and ending with real letters. They do not need or benefit from the systematic direct instruction in reading that they will experience later in elementary school. Early readers need to be encouraged in their efforts.
The World at Their Fingertips promotes school readiness. What is school readiness?
School readiness is an important recognition that children need certain specific skills and knowledge to succeed in school. We understand that children have to be ready for the particular schools that they will encounter. We meet that responsibility by focusing on the intellectual and social skills necessary for school success in the preschool year prior to the transition to school.
What are some of the things I should expect to see that promote school readiness?
You should see evidence of the value of spoken and written language everywhere. You should see pre-kindergarten fours and fives learning to function responsibly in a group setting: becoming more able to adjust to the needs of others and group rules, and showing patience. You should see children asking questions, defining, testing, and solving problems, and articulating solutions in words and on paper.
The World at Their Fingertips is developmentally appropriate. What does developmentally appropriate practice mean?
Developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) is an important concept developed largely by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. DAP is a recognition that children at various ages and levels of development require different caring and learning practices. Young children need hands-on active learning, recognition of their understanding of the world, acceptance of their social and emotional capacities, and opportunities for appropriate challenge and mastery. DAP is not a rigid and universal standard and requires consideration of what the individual child is capable of, the child's culture, and the recognition that children develop at different rates.
What About the Best for My Child?
But I want more for my child. He's talented and I want him to get a leg up, a head start. What can I expect you to do?
You can expect us to listen to you and with your help come to know about your special and unique child and plan to together provide the experiences that your child needs to thrive in our group setting. Expect us to observe, listen to your child, and share our observations with you.
What can I do?
As educators and parents, we have to do similar things. The most important thing that you can do is spend time with your child and give him your undivided attention. During that time, listen to your child and have real conversations. Talk about his interests and ask questions that extend his thinking and vocabulary. Follow up particular interests with activities and projects. Read to your child a lot and read with your child; encourage your child to write notes, lists, and make books (even before he can write real letters or words). Involve your child in household tasks that involve reading and writing - grocery lists, messages, etc. Share songs, rhymes, chants, nonsense language games, and poems to help your child recognize the sounds in words and to link the sounds to certain letters (phonemic awareness). Our job is to do all those things as well as offering a world rich with hands-on experience for exploration and problem solving.
What about enrichment: special classes and activities?
In terms of enrichment opportunities in music, dance and movement, athletics, and so forth, doing things with your child that you both enjoy doing is usually more valuable than doing things simply because they are "good for the child." If your child shows an interest in special activities, take advantage of opportunities for enrichment but still leave ample unscheduled "down" time for your child to play and "mess around." Those times are important developmentally because those are the times when your child learns who she is and what she can be. Moderation is important. Very few developmental experts see excessive use of enrichment programs as necessary for preschool children and many question their value relative to the potential harm of the "overscheduled and hurried child."
Final Thoughts
Is there anything else that I need to know about The World at their Fingertips: Education for Bright Horizons?
Yes. World is not a static curriculum. It will continue to grow and change, taking advantage of new research, new ideas, new technology, and feedback from children, parents, and teachers. The Education at Bright Horizons web site for teachers will allow teachers throughout the company to share good practices through the Bright Ideas searchable database available next year.
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