WF, 8/19/2024 | Wee Friends Early Childhood Program LLC

Happy Monday!

**Wee Friends will be closed on Monday, September 2nd for Labor Day.

Today, we officially kick off our academic school year of 2024-2025! As we dive into our curriculum, we wanted to share a little bit about what that looks like, how it was created, and how we implement it everyday. Our curriculum was written by our director and owner, Tami.

The following descriptions are taken from our blog and if you’d like to learn more about our program curriculum, please visit our blog: https://weefriendskids.com/about-us/program-philosophy/

At Wee Friends, our ultimate curriculum goal is to foster a love of learning and inquisitiveness that will translate into a lifelong quest for knowledge while simultaneously assuring that every Wee Friend child is prepared for the academic and social challenges of elementary school. Our constructivist approach to education blends the best of emergent curriculum with thoughtful academic learning goals outlined in our Framework for Academic Balance Curriculum (FAB). Our classroom values the whole child so we meet social emotional developmental goals in our Mindful Attention with Curiosity and Kindness Curriculum (MACK).

To ensure the right ratio of child initiated academic activities to teacher directed Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) academic activities, our Framework for Academic Balance ensures our older preschoolers and kindergartners have been offered activities that encompass the Indiana Academic Standards for Kindergarten. Our FAB curriculum does not compromise or change our constructivist learning environment because the activities are always connected to our emergent curriculum and incorporated naturally into our day.

Our FAB cycles begin each September and include math and literacy goals over a 12 week time frame. Science and social study topics are covered in intervals between the 12 week cycles. In addition to our FAB curriculum, children participate in daily routines that support their academic growth including daily journaling, individual and group story times, message boards, pop up teacher-directed and/or teacher supported learning activities, and an abundance of educational materials at their disposal for self-initiated learning.

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We started off our morning implementing PREK1 sign in again! PREK1 group members came to the sign in board where we talked about their family and how many family members live in their household.

Later on in PREK1 group, we dove deeper into our families by documenting the people that make up our family. After reading, ‘The Family Book’ by Todd Park, we talked about how different families can look. For example, one of our friends may have two mommy’s or another friend may have a mommy and daddy who don’t live together. We love to identify the diverse characteristics of our group while also noticing the similarities too!

Social Studies: K.3.6 Identify and compare similarities and differences in families, classmates, neighbors and neighborhoods, and ethnic and cultural groups.

As mentioned above, we are talking about family and home life this week. Today we used freshly made colored play dough to match with little families and to spur some imaginative play around the subject. Imaginative play is a great way for kids to process what they are learning.

PREK2: During group time today we enjoyed a deep breathing “story” called “hot chocolate breath” to get our bodies into a calm state. We read the book, “Love You Forever”. Afterwards, we talked about how in the story there were two people in the family, a mother and a son. We each talked about who is in our own family and made a group list.