LEARNING CENTERS

WHOLE  GROUP ACTIVITIES  AND ACTIVE PLAY | SENSORY EXPLORATION AREAS | QUIET ACTIVITY AREAS | IMAGINATION AREAS

~To develop large motor coordination.

~To develop balance, locomotion and strength.

~To provide opportunities for group interactions and an outlet for energy

~To encourage creativity by taking apart and emptying, sorting and stacking, assembling and building various constructions. In their creative and imaginative designs they find similarities with the real world.

~To promote language math, fine motor, and coordination skills. 

~ Provides children with materials for designing and building, organizing projects, and implementing them.

~Children learn about shapes, sizes, and distances.

~They develop eye-hand coordination as well as logical/mathematical thinking.

~They also practice classification, measurement, fractions, order, balance, symmetry, stability, and cause and effect.

 ~By interacting and cooperating with other children they are able to develop their social skills.

3.       MUSIC CENTER

~To develop skills of expression, rhythm, listening and coordination.

~To promote an understanding and an appreciation for music.

~The materials available in these centers, such as funnels, strainers, etc., provide children with the opportunities to develop their fine motor skills.

~While apparently performing simple experiments, children are actually solving problems and developing logical thinking.

~To provide tactile and sensory stimulation.

~To provide verbal expression, socialization and emotional relaxation.

~To stimulate cognitive development by encouraging children to reason, analyze, explore and classify.

~ Designed to be a comfortable space where children relax, enjoy, and explore books. It surrounds their reading experience in a calming and enjoyable mood.                                    

~Provides children with opportunities to hold and read books, to participate in non-verbal communication, interpret pictures and text, and to talk about what each of them discover.

~Through meaningful experiences at this center, children will come to feel motivated about a ¨true reading experience.  

~Promotes language and reading readiness skills.

~Develop an appreciation for literature.

~Provides children with the opportunity to explore different materials that help them develop and practice their hand/eye coordination and perceptual-motor skills, such as: cutting, grasping, releasing, pushing, pulling, assembling, and disassembling.

~ Additional objectives of this center include: reinforcing computational and problem-solving skills as well as patterning, sequencing, size, and measurement.

 ~When categorizing and sorting materials found at this center, children are also exercising their mathematical and logical thinking.

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~This is a center of social interaction, where children interpret roles of their everyday lives; usually imitating the adults around them. Sometimes this center is transformed has household items, for this is what children know best since it is the environment from which they come. Throughout the school year this center changes into different settings depending on the unit of study, therefore allowing children to take on different roles. Main objectives include: developing social skills such as communication, negotiation, problem solving, as well as improving a child's representational skills, where they show what they know, and most of all their interests.                                                                                                              

 ~Provide practice in dressing and undressing skills.

~ Provides the children with opportunities to creatively and imaginatively discover line, color, shape, and texture by seeing and feeling objects. 

~The variety of materials enables them to have sensory experiences such as expressing their own thoughts and ideas through picture making, puppetry, modeling, constructing, etc. 

~To develop a sense of personal accomplishment.

~The writing center is an excellent place to communicate ideas and messages through letters, words and graphics.

 ~Children enjoy copying letters, and using the letters they know, to try out new words, which is called invented spelling.

 ~They can also express themselves through drawings, which they can compile into a book of their own. Therefore, kids explore their ideas naturally, creatively, and in a way that enables them to make decisions that enrich their first writing experience.

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