Our Curriculum

Over the past several years, early childhood education has been increasingly geared toward preparing young children for later academic success.

The DLM Early Childhood Express

The DLM Early Childhood Express (Needs adobe reader. If Adobe reader is not installed in your computer, download it here) is designed to match instruction with the latest research about how children learn and develop. Here are just a few of the ways the findings are expressed in this program.

• A rich learning environment contributes to brain structure and capacity.
  Research suggests that the richer a child’s environment, the more neural connections the brain will create. The DLM Early Childhood Express offers a wide range of materials to keep the children engaged and stimulated. The lessons focus on using a multi-sensory approach to ensure that children absorb and remember what they are experiencing
• Experience is the architect of the brain.
  The brain reinforces and strengthens neural connections when activities and experiences are repeated, expanded, and connected. Our curriculum provides continuous opportunities for children to revisit what they have learned, viewing it within new and expanded contexts.
• Neuroscience research suggests that children learn by identifying patterns and connecting those patterns to previously learned material. Our curriculum helps children find patterns and make connections through meaningful activities, relevant and child-centered themes, and cross-curricular connections.
  Getting learners focused, allowing them time to practice, and providing time for reflection are equally important as actually developing the lesson. In The DLM Early Childhood Express (Needs adobe reader. If Adobe reader is not installed in your computer, download it here), the lesson cycle is driven by information from neuroscience research about how the brain processes and stores information. Each lesson begins with a FOCUS strategy that prepares children for the instruction and helps them focus their attention. The DEVELOP strategies that follow present the instruction. Children follow the lesson by participating in several PRACTICE activities, which allow them to apply and make sense of what they have just learned. Finally, they are encouraged to REFLECT on what they have learned and on how they will use the new information.
• For children to grow intellectually, they must feel confident in their abilities and secure in their relationships with teachers, family members, and peers.
  Healthy social-emotional development is an important aspect of the DLM Early Childhood Express. It is addressed in every lesson, built into content connections, and inherent in the way families are actively involved in our classrooms

The Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers & Twos.

A comprehensive curriculum that helps teachers achieve the very best program for children under three. If the interactions children have are nurturing, consistent and loving, and the experiences they have are appropriately challenging, then infants, toddlers and twos grow and flourish.

Creative Curriculum Origins
Creative curriculum rests on a firm foundation of research and responds to new requirements for addressing academic content. The approach from its beginnings has been developed based on the theories and research that inform decision making in the early childhood field. The works of Piaget, Maslow, Erikson, Smilansky, Vygotsky and Gardner are all implemented in Creative Curriculum. This curriculum helps children acquire social competence and the skills they need to succeed as learners.

For young children, meaningful and long-lasting learning requires active thinking and experimenting to find out how things work. This is best accomplished through purposeful play facilitated by highly intentional teaching practices. 

Handwriting Without Tears

The goal of Handwriting Without Tears is to make a legible and fluent handwriting an easy and automatic skill for all students. The curriculum uses multi-sensory techniques and consistent habits for letter formation to teach handwriting to all students in Pre-K. In addition, HWT provides parents and teachers the instructional techniques and activities to help improve a child’s self-confidence, pencil grip, body awareness, posture and so much more! For more information, feel free to visit their website, www.hwtears.com. 

Growing With Mathematics

Our Pre-K and Kindergarten students participate in this core math program that addresses the NCTM content and process standards. It carefully guides students from their own language to mathematical and symbolic language. Lessons are designed to develop number sense and computational fluency as students explore a range of strategies for problem solving.. Growing with Mathematics is recognized by the National Science Foundation as a research-based mathematics curriculum and by the U.S. Department of Education as a promising program.