DREAM BUILDERS GREATNESS CENTER

Mission Statement

Dream Builders Greatness Child Development Center is a program designed for children to “Dare to Dream” as they step toward “Greatness” while empowering leadership.

Philosophy

Dream Builders Greatness Child Development Center believes in the development of the whole child. Our curriculum is designed to focus on the creative, emotional, intellectual, physical, and social growth of each individual that is clean, safe and health oriented. The purpose of our approach is to foster competency in the young child. While the emphasis is on children, family involvement is encouraged and supported.

We have several goals for children:

• To be competent and confident in their abilities to be self-directed in a constructive, creative manner

• To be successful in future educational experiences

• To develop a love for learning and the ability to know how to learn

• To develop self-control and a sense of right and wrong

• To feel good about who they are

• To learn cooperation with other children as well as adults

• To reach their full potential in emotional, intellectual, physical and social development

CURRICULUM

The teaching staff at Dream Builders Greatness CDC believes in educating the whole child. The classrooms are divided into learning centers that allow the children to choose areas of self - interest to explore. Our curriculum is "Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers and Two’s" and "Creative Curriculum for Pre-school". We use the "The Kindness Curriculum" as a character development tool.

INFANTS

The earliest learners are the youngest infants. At birth, babies begin to learn to trust. This builds a foundation for them to learn other important skills. Infants need to know someone really cares about them. They will grasp this concept through the tone of voice and gentle touch a caregiver uses. Once they know that someone really cares about them, they will discover that they are an important but separate individual.

Our goal is to provide experiences to assist children in creating a picture of who they are, what they can do, and what they think and feel. We want to show them they are important, unique and competent. We strive to accomplish this through the following key experiences:

Language Development

• Listening and Talking

• Books and Pictures

• Conversations and Sounds

Physical Development

• Large Muscles: rolling over, sitting, crawling, standing, and walking

• Small Muscles: grasping, picking up, dropping, and changing hands

TODDLERS

In order to keep toddlers busy and happy, caregivers must have lots of activities and ideas that are oriented towards child involvement. Learning to get along with others, caring for themselves, thinking for themselves, and expressing themselves are important skills that one year olds are beginning to learn. We use activities to guide us as we provide developmental care for these children. In our planning process, we strive to help these children develop both their minds and bodies. We provide the following key experiences in our Toddler classrooms:

Listening and Talking

• Books and Pictures: Children are read to every day and play simple picture games.

• Conversation: Children are encouraged to use or show understanding of words. Adults point to, name and talk about pictures or real items.

• Role model appropriate conversation skills (eye contact, close proximity, and allowing time for someone to answer) are taught and used.

Physical Development

• Large Muscles: Walk, run, climb, balance, throw, kick, jump.

• Small Muscles: Puzzles, stringing spools, pull-apart toys, using washable crayons and markers, filling and dumping toys into a container, zipping, and feeding one’s self.

Creative Activities

• Art: Creating with crayons, colored chalk, washable markers and paint, molding with play dough, and designing with paper, collage materials and glue.

• Blocks: Cloth, plastic, wooden or cardboard blocks along with toy people, animals, and vehicles used daily to create scenes for make believe.

• Dramatic Play: Pocketbooks, bags, baskets, playhouse furniture, dolls, telephones, toy shopping carts, and other dress up items are available daily for children to pretend about things they know and see around them.

• Music and Movement: Musical instruments and toys, songs, finger plays, recorded music (classical, multicultural, lullabies, rhythm, and dance).

2s, 3s, and 4s

Much like our infants and toddlers, active learning is encouraged with these age groups as well. The environment in our preschool is child-centered. Caregivers initiate ideas and allow children to create their own learning experiences based on what they already know and what they want to learn. We desire to provide children with the most enjoyable and productive preschool education. This is accomplished through:

• Introduction of a letter, number, word, color, theme, concept and skill each week.

• Beginning reading skills: upper and lowercase experiences, phonics, sight words, word walls, sentence structure.

• Emergent writing skills: scribbling, drawing.

• Continued development of small muscles: beginner use of scissors.

• Concepts of print introduction: how to open a book, where to start reading, left to right progression, use of capital letters, author, illustrator, letters in words, words in sentences, and sentence structure.

• Books: children will be read to frequently throughout each day in order to expand their knowledge on our themes. A variety of reading materials will be used (fantasy, factual, multicultural, diverse ability, poetry). Additionally, books will be accessible at all times for children to read at their leisure.

• Math: manipulatives are available to foster discovery of size, shape and color. Math activities will begin developing such concepts as rote counting, one to one correspondence, comparison of amounts and sizes, classification, sorting, grouping, matching, sequencing, ordering, volume, dimensions and time.

• Creative expression: dramatic play center, art center, block center, music and movement, puppets, flannel board stories.

• Continued development of large muscles: climbing, hopping, skipping, galloping, marching, riding toys with and without pedals, push-pull toys, sliding, manipulating balls, and swinging.

• Social and personal skills: Playing cooperatively with others, taking turns, listening and expressing ideas, stating their name, age and address, demonstrating self-help skills, showing confidence, controlling behavior, and demonstrating pride in their work.

Character Education

Character Education is more important today than ever. One of the greatest gifts that we can provide the children in our care is a strong sense of personal values. Good character is something that will instill in the children attending Dream Builders Greatness CDC a desire to become successful adults able to make a positive contribution to our society. Character Education is instruction which includes teaching concepts covering basic human values such as integrity, respect, responsibility, caring, fairness, citizenship and more.