Curriculum
Dulin’s curriculum promotes a child’s social, emotional, physical, and intellectual growth and development using a play-based curriculum. Our curriculum is a body of experiences that promote the child’s holistic development.
Students regularly engage in center-based activities which may include art projects, blocks, puzzles, math games, science exploration, and dramatic play, as well as group time with books, conversation, and songs, and physical outdoor or “rainy-day room” play. Our 3’s and 4’s classes take field trips throughout the year, which may include a pumpkin patch or nature centers!
Learning Through Play
Cognitive Skills
Children feel, take apart, drop, build, and experiment with objects and things in their world to learn size, shape, color, numbers, prepositions, and other concepts.
Motor Skills
Children are constantly learning how to control and use their body in space. Through outdoor play they learn to use their legs to climb, arms to reach, hands to use chalk, whole body to run; and through classroom activities they learn to use their hands and fingers together to cut paper, color on a page, separate pretend food onto plates, and drive cars down ramps.
Problem-Solving Skills
As children play, they are constantly faced with problems; teachers facilitate opportunities for children to figure things out for themselves by guiding their thinking and movements to their desired outcome. Turn taking, sharing, developing play roles, putting a cap on a marker, or closing a jar are all opportunities for children to develop these skills.
Pre-Academic Skills
When children use materials like crayons, shaving cream, sand, or paint to scribble, and create lines, and circles to represent a person, they are practicing all of the strokes they’ll need to write letters. Children learn letters, sounds, words, and their meanings through books, read alouds, songs, role play, and conversation.
Social Skills
Play gives children the opportunity to learn, cooperate, share, and negotiate. Children learn to be a participating, responsible member of the small democracy of their classroom.
Emotional Skills
Through play, children learn to express strong emotions in safe ways and develop empathy for others. Self-esteem is fostered as children gain control over their emotions.
We aim to . . .
Increase each child’s ability to follow directions, handle transitions, and listen in a sustained manner.
Develop each child’s self-confidence and ability to share and work cooperatively.
Help each child find acceptable outlets for emotions.
Provide learning at each child’s level.
Build on skills successively; for example, using manipulatives in order to strengthen hand muscles in preparation for drawing and writing.
2-3 Years Old: Finding Independence
By the end of the school year, our two-year-olds should accept adults other than their parents as helpers, and enjoy playing alongside their peers. Being a part of a group, they begin to learn more about the rights of others, the concept of taking turns, sharing, and how to transition between activities without becoming upset. Growing communication skills are encouraged to promote change in play patterns from parallel to associative play.
3-4 Years Old: Expressing Creativity
Newly developed language and motor skills become tools for unlimited creativity. As they begin to master these new skills, their more sophisticated dexterity and strength allow for more involved games and use of materials, and they begin using language to express their needs, settle disputes, and explain their ideas. Pre-academic skills are beginning to be acquired through developmentally-appropriate games, art, music and imagination.
4-5 Years Old: Gaining Confidence
As these lively children develop their ability to focus their energy, we help them to master increasingly complex skills—from managing their own clothing, to designing, drawing, painting, and cutting their own project. They show great interest in new words, rhymes, silly songs, numbers, letters, pantomime, and active group games. We focus on increasing each student’s attention span and self-control, embracing the concept of sharing, tolerating the needs of others, enjoying cooperative play, and fostering abstract thinking. While hands-on experiences continue facilitate the majority of our learning, we also introduce more involved stories and quiet group participation.
Note: Dulin Cooperative Preschool is a ministry of Dulin United Methodist Church. While Dulin Preschool families are invited to participate in church events, Dulin Preschool has no religious component or curriculum. We welcome all religious and cultural traditions.