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The Guiding Principles of Our Early Education Program

With the ongoing assistance of our curriculum advisors - made up of local university professors and early childhood education experts - Little Leprechaun has translated our Best Practice Curriculum theories into a set of guiding principles that describe the types of activities in which children and teachers are engaged throughout the day. The following represents our guide for "Good Things for Children and Teachers to be Doing".

• Good Things for Children to be Doing •

Exercising All of Their Senses

Little Leprechaun's programs provide children with the opportunity to use not only their physical senses but also exercise the emotional and aesthetic parts of their being. As human beings we are endowed with the ability to experience a variety of emotions. We may not always welcome some of the emotions that children express, but experiencing them is part of what it means to be fully human. The role of the teacher is to help children accept these emotions and learn how they can be expressed in socially acceptable ways.It is also important to provide children with the opportunity to have a variety of aesthetic experiences. We expose children to music, art, and language that can speak to their feelings and emotions.

Problem Solve Within Both the Physical and Social Worlds
In order to construct their understandings of how the physical and social worlds work, children need the opportunity to engage their minds with meaningful challenges and problems. We provide children with large blocks of time to engage in age-appropriate problem solving, including manipulative play, art and music play, language play, and socio-dramatic play. The opportunity for meaningful problem solving also occurs when children experience interpersonal conflicts with their peers. When these conflicts arise, our teachers provide support and encourage children to work out their own solutions to the problems rather than having a solution simply imposed on them. Children begin to develop a sense of control and efficacy when they are able to work out their own solutions.

Use Symbols to Represent and Communicate
One of the most powerful moments in a developing child’s life is when she becomes a user of symbols. This typically occurs sometime in the second year of life when she begins to use physical actions and gestures to imitate some aspect of her experience and later, when she begins to use sounds and words to communicate.This beginning of what is called “representational competence” is a major development in a child’s life because she is now able to represent ideas and communicate those ideas to others.Language – oral, written (and sign) – is perhaps the prime representational ability that develops, but it is by no means the only form of symbolic system available to children. Art, movement, song, and other forms of imagery are also ways in which children can express their feelings. Drawing on the “100 Languages of Children”,developed by the Italian schools of Reggio Emilia, we provide opportunities for children to use a wide variety of media for the purpose of representing their ideas and feelings.

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