EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAM/CURRICULUM

Our goal is to encourage the children to be actively involved in the learning process to experience a variety of developmentally appropriate activities and materials. Our program respects the development of each child’s emotional, intellectual, physical, and social skills.  We give children opportunities to choose a variety of activities and materials. We give children opportunities to choose a variety of activities and time to explore through active involvement.  

For Infants during the early years, infants are learning to trust their world, actively explore their environment, and do things for themselves.  Staff show respect for children and interact with them in caring ways. They plan individual activities and interactions with every infant each day, centering on daily routines such as morning and evening transitions, diapering, feeding or eating, and napping.  They also introduce infants to variety of activities including art, outdoor time, playing with toys, looking at books, singing songs, exploring water play, and more. We use the Infant Frog Street Curriculum for this group.  It is an activity-based curriculum in which the children learn through play and child-initiate activities. The teacher plan “one on one” time for each child daily.  

For Toddlers, our staff plans a variety of fun learning activities to help them solve, predict, plan, share, cooperate, empathize, and understand how to get along in their world.  Again, the focus is on maximizing play along with art, outdoor time, stories, songs, sand, and water play, food projects, creative movement, and imitation and pretending.  We promote positive self-esteem and self-help skills.  We use the Toddler Frog Street Curriculum for this age group.  This is a research based curriculum in which the children learn through play and child-initiated activities, as well as teacher-initiated activities. 

For Preschoolers, our curriculum prepares the children for preschool and kindergarten.  We use the Pre-K Frog Street Curriculum as a benchmark tool to supplement our instruction.  Our staff plans activities and interest (learning) centers in the areas of creative movement, music, dramatic play, science discovery, language arts, blocks, art, math, and other areas that interest the children.  We build on the child’s milestone and interest.  We encourage active learning by providing each child with a safe and inviting environment to explore.  Our teachers facilitate and extend learning by designing the daily curriculum with accurate knowledge where each child is at the development and how to extend learning in each development domain. 

High Quality Child Care begins with quality teachers. We acknowledge that the strength of Alpha Academy is in the commitment and dedication of our teachers To assure our High Quality standards are maintained, we have extensive on going training programs which include health and safety procedures classroom management techniques, detection of child abuse, community relations with our families, staff and superior developmental teaching techniques. Our teachers support our standards of Child Care Ouality. Our teachers are enthusiastic and motivated to continue learning and growing. We value our teachers as well as we do our families and children.

Professional Development: To ensure our high quality standards are maintained, we have extensive on-going onsite and offsite training programs paid by center, caregiver, or free classes offered by the community, which include 16 clock hours of pre-service training within 90 days of employment, 30 clock hours of annual training for Caregivers, 36 clock hours of annual training for Directors, and certified CPR and First Aid annual training. Training is organized and recorded annually in a Training Plan and Training Log for each staff member individually in regards to the outcome of their annual performance appraisal to enhance their Professional Development. 

Discipline and Guidance Policy:  It is our intent that each child enjoys the activities planned by understanding that they are responsible for their own actions. With prior knowledge of our basic rules of safety and good conduct, each child is made aware of how to exercise self-discipline.  We are here to help them, and we want them to succeed. Our intent is for the Director, Teacher, Parent and child work together to have child practice positive behavior.  Director and Teacher will use the discipline notebook to record any negative behavior on child and then communicate with parents at all times.