Curriculum
At Willow Tree, we mainly use Creative Curriculum as a foundation for planning and implementing developmentally appropriate learning objectives and goals. We use Creative Curriculum amongst all the classrooms. Creative Curriculum gives teachers the flexibility to incorporate children’s emerging interests and meeting their individual needs. Teachers observe closely to their students before composing their bi-weekly lessons to ensure we are meeting the child’s interest, developmental needs, safety, and to develop a sense of competence with a collaborative guidance from teachers and parents. Finally, our classrooms are built out to resemble a Creative Curriculum classroom by being divided by children’ s different developmental areas of: cognitive table activities, dramatic play area, science and sensory table, large motor play, music and movment area, block play, and creative project table.
Willow Tree is also incorporating the practices of the Reggio Emilia Curriculum. Documentation is a huge part of the Reggio Emilia, and at Willow Tree we display that with a modern twist. Each child has a portfolio filled with assessments, written narratives, picture documentation, and dated samples of children’s work to show the progress of the child’s development. We also display the children’s work throughout the classroom and hallways. In class during our group discussions, we try not to answer a child’s question right away but encourage them to generate their own hypotheses and to test them through exploration, discussions, debates, and research. Overall, we are a play based school and we believe that learning should be fun! We understand that children have different styles of learning, and we configure that into our planning as best as we can by mixing observation and given information about the students. Unfortunately, with educating children, there isn’t an ‘one size fits all’ curriculum, and that is why Willow Tree uses a combination. Our school focuses on Creative and Reggio Emilia Curriculums. Our lesson plans are a perfect blend of teacher initiated and children’s recent interests. Both curriculums believe that family involvement is an important part in a child’s development, and all the classrooms have a fun project where the families participate in.
