Our Kids Child Development Center
About Our Kids Child Development Center
Our work with children is inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to early care and education. Our early childhood professionals are dedicated to professional development, as well as furthering and challenging our own thinking. Together, we traverse the pathway of deepening our understanding and the integration of the tenets of the Emergent philosophy into our work with children and families, our classrooms, and our program as a whole. We strive to reflect this philosophy in four major focal areas: relationships, environment, curriculum, and documentation.
Supporting, fostering, and modeling relationships and social interactions are not only a focal point of our work with young children, they are the building blocks. As children's relationships grow, conflicts sometimes arise, which embarks on a multi-faceted learning experience. We work with children to develop the skills to navigate conflict and work toward resolutions.
Early childhood professionals intentionally create comfortable, inviting, and flexible classroom environments which reflect the lives and interests of the children. Open-ended and naturally sourced materials are provided, which inspire children, invite them to create and imagine, and instill wonder.
By listening to children, teaching teams construct a meaningful curriculum, allowing it to be guided by the interests of both individual children, and the group as a whole. Children's interests and inquiries serve as the starting point from which projects develop. Early childhood professionals see themselves as partners in the children's learning and investigations.
The documentation of children's learning experiences guides teachers to a deeper understanding of children's interests and questions, provides children with the opportunity to revisit their work and to go even further, and serves as a resource for sharing the process of learning with others.