Curriculum

Infant

UUMDS provides a safe, comfortable, nurturing environment for infants. Infants engage in age-appropriate activities that encourage curiosity, learning, and the development of skills including reaching, grabbing, rolling, sitting, crawling, pulling up, and walking, as well as early language and other social skills. Our experienced staff creates a feeding and sleep schedule for each child based on his or her age and individual needs. We keep low infant/staff ratios to allow teachers to spend more time caring for each individual child.

Toddler

Coming soon.

Twos

2 year old room goals:

  1. Create a happy, enthusiastic, inspiring, and accepting classroom environment.
  2. Help each child develop independence and self-discipline by providing choices while creating the appropriate boundaries and limits.
  3. Provide opportunities to develop skills through fun, age-appropriate activities and free-play.

Learning philosophy/curriculum:

Children between the age of two and three are typically hands-on learners. We therefore focus on learning activities that involve learning by doing. Children are taught through learning centers and other activities which give them the opportunity to explore and create either individually or in large or small groups.

Learning centers and other group activities may include the following:

  • Play-Doh
  • Building blocks
  • Arts and creative expression center
  • Puzzles
  • Play Animals and Manipulative toys
  • Music
  • Story time
  • Games
  • Dramatic Play/Dress-up

These learning activities build important skills. For example, Play-Doh helps develop strength and control in muscles that your child will use to write. Music time helps develop early vocabulary and music skills and also a love for music. Musical children often do better in math and music may also help your child’s self-confidence and imagination. Story time introduces your child to books and reading and allows him or her to practice listening, paying attention, thinking and understanding sequencing. Puzzles and games develop hand-eye coordination and memory and teach visual discrimination. They also provide opportunities for practicing social skills like taking turns. Creative projects allow self expression while teaching language and motor skills.

We believe that supervised free play provides an opportunity for this age group to practice important social skills including sharing and negotiating. Free play also provides opportunities for our two year olds to make decisions independently and to learn how to deal with emotions.

If weather permits, the children play outside every day. For bad weather there is an indoor open play area.

In addition to organized learning activities and free play, our twos practice certain practical life skills everyday, including transitioning from “sippy cup” to “big cup” and eating with utensils. We will also work with parents on potty training when the child is ready.

Threes

In the three year old classes, the children are introduced to many of the important skills and knowledge they will need in pre-kindergarten. We work on developing a daily routine that includes time for more structured learning activities as well as free play to prepare children for a pre-kindergarten classroom setting.

During the more structured learning activities, children practice recognizing letters, numbers, shapes, and colors in activities such as coloring, tracing, and letter recognition games. The children also practice important pre-kindergarten skills like using scissors. Children work daily with puzzles, memory blocks, legos, manipulative toys, and games to develop hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. We also have story time daily, and once per week a visitor from the Calcasieu Parish library comes to read to the class.

We believe free play is important for the development of imagination, creativity, independence, and social skills. During free play time, a variety of toys, books, and props are available including dress-up props, dolls, cars, books, and drawing materials.

PreKindergarten

Our PreKindergarten class uses a curriculum based on the PreKindergarten Comprehensive Curriculum developed by the Louisiana Department of Education and used in Calcasieu Parish Public Schools. For more information on the State’s curriculum, see http://www.doe.state.la.us/lde/saa/2108.html