What Will the Children Learn?

Every program needs a set of clearly stated educational objectives that answers this question. I strongly suggest you look to objectives listed in any curriculum approved by NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) as a resource for developmentally appropriate objectives/standards/skills you want your children to attain. Assure yourself that the expectations you have for growth and skill attainment in your classroom match with the evidence on child development and research on learning. I like the idea of calling these objectives Strength Expectations to emphasize the use of a child’s strengths to continue positive progress or to meet any discovered needs. It’s like the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors – Strengths beat Needs.

Because of the interrelatedness of development, a good program sets its standards using a curriculum with an overall mission of optimal growth of a WHOLE CHILD – a child capable of learning and acquiring strengths in all three Developmental Areas: body, mind, and spirit.

Those three areas of development can be divided into Learning Fields that match the description of the areas – this is purely common sense.

• Body=Health, Gross Motor, Fine Motor
• Mind=Intelligence, Language-Literacy, Math, Science, Social Studies
• Spirit=Self-Awareness, Expression, Family, Humanity

The Learning Fields can then be subdivided into General Strength Expectations which describe the overall skills and concepts in each field, and further subdivided into Specific Strength Expectations for each age group within a program. I won’t take time and space to list each of the Specific Strength Expectations here but my idea of the division of the General Strength Expectations and Learning Fields through the Developmental Areas looks like this:

general-strength-expectations

Program administrators should make sure that all teachers are completely familiar with and agree on the validity of both General and Specific Strength Expectations and parents are given copies of the Specific Strength Expectations for their children upon registration/enrollment/orientation.

Next Blog: All Aboard? Maybe Not