Learning Place
Learning is not just 1 2 3's and A B C's. It starts with a child developing sensory, motor, social, and emotional skills. Only with these "lower brain functions" can the brain put down a foundation for "formal" academic learning.
We know there’s so much more to learning and education than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Learning and education is not only formal through traditional education avenues, but informal through everyday interactions and experiences. It's the formation of critical thinking skills to evaluate problems and people to decide "is this good for me or not?", social skills and etiquette in order to interact in our increasingly global community, fostering respect and empathy for others' traditions, and learning from the past so as not to repeat mistakes in the future. For this reason, we focus on educating the "whole child". We believe in supporting children so they may grow to be respectable, responsible, well-rounded critical thinking adults with integrity. They will then be able to make the best possible decisions about our future.
We would like to partner with you to care for your children on a regular basis, potty-train, provide homework help, and preschool activities. We play board games, age appropriate Playstation games, outside games, and pretend kitchen. We do crafts, coloring, reading, puzzles and flashcards, and watch age appropriate movies/ television programming. We attend park outings, picnics, and age appropriate community/library events now and then. We bake cupcakes, cookies, and the occasional Christmas ornament.
We understand that all children learn, grow, and develop at their own pace. While one may learn to walk at nine months, another may save it for the 18 month mark and that's okay. We are all born with different characteristics and personalities that shape our lives and developmental pace but still perfectly normal. As we all know, we can make the bathroom available to a child at every opportunity, but we can't make him urinate. Still often times he chooses to do it right after the diaper is back on!
For our infants: we surround them with loving arms and attention while giving them a safe environment for the self-directed learning necessary to foster physical growth and development skills. We actively work with them so they may advance to the next stage of physical, cognitive, and social development.
For our toddlers/preschoolers: we provide toilet help, directed and self-directed learning opportunities, preschool activities equip them for kindergarten, and positive surroundings to practice their social skills. Our preschool/kindergarten preparedness activities are based on the concept of Whole-Child development. For more, visit our Resources page.For our school age kids: we aid in completing homework and a provide positive after school environment for kids to practice helping with and being role models to younger children.
Our daily schedule is catered to the needs of the children in our care at the time. After breakfast and possibly taking children to school, we devote the mornings to our little ones. For our "fresh out of the package" patrons we work on physical development. Our toddlers get teacher directed practice with basic skills. With our preschool ages we work on educational activities to prepare them for kindergarten. The morning may also include an outing to the library for story or craft time. After lunch and quiet time we may need to pick up children from school. Our afternoons tend to focus on the needs of our older children and teaching them how to be a helping hand to younger ones.
Our general schedule is listed below but is also somewhat fluid due to children in care, weather, activities planned, outings, holidays, etc.
Check out our Us In Action page to see some our field trips and activities.