curriculum

PRINCIPLES FOR LEARNING AT HAPPY FACE NURSERY SCHOOL

Happy Days at Happy Face - Since 1973

Year-Round Enrollment! For All Children, Ages 2.5 through 5!

• All learning and projects are coordinated through theme-based literature.
  
  

• Materials are culturally and linguistically appropriate (including beginning Spanish and Sign Language).
  

• Success is measured by performance assessment (portfolio collections, work samples, and organized record-keeping).
  

• Children construct knowledge based on what they already know, as well as what they want to know.
  

• Hands-on learning is experienced through art projects, as well as small and large motor play.
  

• Students are encouraged to develop autonomy academically and socially.
  
• Play is a central ingredient!
• Adequate time is provided for exploring, questioning, and problem solving.
• Children progress at their own rate.
  

• Families are important!
  

Our 2 ½-Year-Old-Program offers a fun, warm, safe environment for young children to make friends and experience school for the first time.  Emphasis is placed on sharing and cooperating in a group atmosphere.  Themes are centered on nursery rhymes with games, activities, and simple projects to reinforce the rhyme.  As soon as a child reaches 2 ½ years of age, they are eligible for enrollment.  A child may start any time during the school year and does not have to be potty trained.

Our 3-Year-Old-Program highlights fun at school, group participation, sharing, communicating and making friends.  To implement this, we follow a routine that is the same every day.  Children sing a greeting song, discuss weather, choose helpers, and plan for the day.  A story is read every day.  Children are eased into speaking in front of their friends by sharing a “Show & Tell” once a week.  We move as a group from room to room – each one focusing on a different type of learning; creative, manipulative, or imaginative with emphasis on shapes, colors, counting, beginning letters and number recognition, and rhyming – and after each one we clean up together.

Our 4-Year-Old-Program follows the same routine, but includes themes to expand the program and stimulate their curiosity with emphasis on letter recognition, letter sound, numeral recognition and value.  Story, art, and all activities coordinate with the theme.  The Fours subscribe to Weekly Reader; make alphabet booklets, and numeral recognition sheets.  Children enjoy many enrichment activities, such as field trips, guest speakers and cultural representatives.

Our Fabulous 5’s is a program for children who will be five (5) by October 1st and have teacher’s recommendation for the program.  It is designed to fill the gap between the 4-Year-Old-Program and Kindergarten.  It is a year of growth and fun, but with an enriched curriculum in social studies and language arts – a gift of time for those who need it.

Should enrollment be low for our Fab’5s program by the late spring of the preceding school year, we may extend eligibility to children who will be five (5) by December 1st, who have had two years of preschool, and who have a teacher’s recommendation for the program.

The Fab 5’s is also offered as an enrichment program for children attending kindergarten.  Children who would like to extend their day of learning and socialization are encouraged to join the Fab 5’s.