Our Curriculum
The curriculum at Discovery Tree guarantees a top-notch learning experience for every child, ensuring that developmental outcomes align with or surpass national standards for early childhood education.
Comprising four essential elements—child-centered, culturally responsive, standards-based, and Montessori-inspired—our curriculum significantly influences the content taught in our classrooms.
Key Curriculum Areas
Child Centered
The focal point of every curriculum decision revolves around the child, with an unwavering commitment to prioritizing the child's needs above all else. Our curriculum is designed to meet each child at their individual level, giving paramount importance to all aspects of child development. We seamlessly incorporate support for diverse and multilingual learners across the curriculum, ensuring an equitable experience for every child.
Standards-Based
Our curriculum adheres to standards rooted in research for ensuring student success. These standards enable us to monitor developmental milestones and shape personalized instruction. Regularly assessing the overall progress of each child empowers educators to concentrate on individualized needs and make informed curricular decisions.
Culturally Responsive
Students flourish when the curriculum captivates their interest and resonates with their personal life experiences. At Discovery Tree, we invest the effort to understand each student and their family. We identify and foster the cultural background and strengths of every student, aiming to enhance academic success and overall well-being.
Montessori-Inspired Approach
The Discovery Tree Curriculum, rooted in Montessori principles, empowers each child's organic development by providing educators with Montessori training and classrooms with complete Montessori materials. While maintaining its Montessori foundation, the curriculum incorporates insights from diverse pedagogies to continually improve support for individualized child development. In our classrooms, children explore interests through hands-on activities with scientifically prepared materials, fostering cognitive achievement, social integration, and emotional regulation.
Elements of the Montessori curriculum that are evident and observable at Discovery Tree encompass:
Social-Emotional Development
The positive influence of social-emotional learning (SEL) on a child's academic success is well-established. The social-emotional well-being of each child stands as a fundamental principle in our curriculum.
We actively foster age-appropriate social-emotional learning, assisting young children in articulating, comprehending, and managing their feelings and emotions. Our educators guide children in collaborative efforts, relationship-building, friendship formation, emotional understanding and response, goal-setting, confidence and self-esteem development, and the making of effective and meaningful decisions.
Language
Our language-centric exercises cultivate the essential knowledge, skills, and concepts required for literacy. Additionally, our curriculum fosters autonomy, cooperation, and a sense of enjoyment in the learning process.
Within Discovery Tree's language-rich setting, children are nurtured in building robust literacy skills, fostering a passion for reading and writing, enhancing cultural proficiency, communicating with peers of varying ages, and gaining the confidence to express their creativity. Our educators are equipped to assist multilingual children in their English language development.
Math
Mathematical materials foster the repetition-based development of memory and abstraction of concepts. The utilization of tangible materials aids children in comprehending intricate ideas by physically enacting them. This hands-on experience enables children to establish a robust foundation and confidence in mathematics prior to kindergarten entry.
Our students engage in sequential counting and delve into measurement through the comparison of weight, texture, and size among various objects. Quantity is frequently linked with symbols, and the exploration encompasses mathematical concepts like the four fundamental operations, number facts, geometry, fractions, money, and time.
Practical Life
Practical life tasks involve interactive activities designed to impart particular skills, such as washing, scrubbing, sweeping, plant care, basic food preparation, and others. Through these exercises, children cultivate robust work habits, enhance their attention span, and attain concentration and emotional regulation. Simultaneously, they develop coordination in both fine and gross motor skills, fostering independence in self-care and environmental responsibilities.
Sensory Development
Young children acquire knowledge through active engagement. Exploring their homes and communities, they absorb information, ideas, and concepts via their senses, utilizing this input to navigate and expand their understanding of the world. Sensorial materials break down this extensive information into tangible, comprehensible concepts.
Children engage in sequencing, pattern recognition, and indirect counting. Furthermore, they are exposed to various subjects like geometry, botany, and geography. The hands-on methodology contributes to the refinement of fine motor skills and the development of hand strength crucial for writing.
Art, Music, and Movement
These engagements foster the enhancement of both fine and gross motor skills while encouraging creativity, imagination, and self-expression.
Children delve into hands-on exploration and experimentation with age-appropriate art materials and techniques, including painting, drawing, clay work, tracing, and mosaics. Additionally, they engage in expressive practices within drama, dance, music, and visual arts, participating both individually and collaboratively in small groups or as a classroom collective.
Outdoor Environment
The soothing impact of nature is beneficial for children seeking an outlet for energy release or a tranquil space for emotional regulation. Our educational methodology enables children to further their appreciation, respect, and affection for nature through play and exploration.
Discovery Tree incorporates a thoughtfully prepared outdoor environment, serving as a purposeful space for learning, exploration, creativity, development of fine and gross motor skills, joy, and imagination. Children have the opportunity to spend time outdoors every day during their school experience.
Enrichment
Discovery Tree strives to offer supplementary learning experiences by forming local partnerships that enhance and support the development of every child.