Our Programs

Baby Nidos (6 weeks-15 months)

Our educators know the importance of creating a trust filled relationship with our infants. As our educators soothe and nurture children they support them in building a sense of confidence by responding quickly and appropriately to their natural cues. Our educators comfort your baby while holding, talking, singing in a quiet reassuring voice, and by making eye contact with them. We encourage our educators to think of and research opportunities they can offer very young children, which will provoke their thinking. Because babies learn with all their senses our educators expose them to multiple sensorial experiences with materials such as paint, clay, sand, light and shadows, and much more.

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Children begin to point, raise hands, and make different movements and sounds to communicate as the educator asks questions connecting to the movement or to the sound. Babies love to be spoken to. Your child will begin to imitate sounds they hear and experiment with different facial expressions like smiling and frowning.

Our educators prepare various large motor experiences inside the classroom, around the common areas of the school, and outside in the playgrounds and garden for your child to challenge themself physically and develop gross motor skills. It is a time when children reach many milestones such as, turning over, sitting, crawling, standing, and maybe even take their first steps.

Nido (15-24 months)

As your child begins to walk, run, and jump, our educators observe and analyze their interactions with the environment, materials, and each other. Our teachers use these observations to recognize your child’s interests and create projections based on your child’s curiosity and their teachers’ intentions. With many toddlers possessing at least 50 words by this age, educators observe your child develop their expressive language skills and witness an increase in their ability to remember events. Empathy, pretend play, and social roles are explored as teachers support your children as they navigate their first relationships and begin to create their own identity.

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While their fine motor skills evolve the children dig and pour in the sensory table, paint, scribble, and express graphically on an easel, paper, or other materials. The world is full of things to discover for the Nidos as they move and dance to music, discover insects, leaves and flowers, and begin sorting and collecting things they find in the playground.

Two’s

As your child grows in a safe and comfortable environment they are more open to take risks and be more autonomous. Independence becomes an evident milestone for two year olds. As they discover all the things they can do they want to do more things for themselves such as eating, washing hands, dressing themselves, and learning to use the toilet. Through various sensorial, fine motor, and gross motor experiences teachers encourage children to become self-sufficient.

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While your child becomes more vocal and begins to put sentences together, our teachers create opportunities for conversations to help expand your child’s comprehension and literacy skills.

The environment is arranged so that children are exposed to their written name, establish a daily flow, create peer relationships, understand emotions and start to express their thoughts and ideas in simple sentences. By encouraging communication between the children they begin to understand the dynamics of a classroom community.

Our educators share stories that help build new vocabulary and also instill the interest to read. The teachers connect stories with objects and events in children’s lives so that they may begin to understand that print and pictures have a meaning.

A variety of opportunities are offered for children to experiment with art and drawing as they are able to make lines, zigzags, make a series of scribbles and begin to give meaning to the symbols they create. Educators create a rich environment to offer various possibilities to recognize common symbols, some letters, sometimes the first letter of their names, and drawing lines that begin looking like letters and shapes.

Educators begin to ask open-ended questions and plan brainstorming discussions to encourage children to verbalize their ideas and promote conversations amongst them. During these discussions the teachers take notes or make recordings to document children’s thinking. As children create theories and ask questions projects begin to emerge. Through projects children develop cognitive skills such as problem solving, collaboration, understanding cause and effect, sharing and how to be a member of a group.

Three’s

As your child turns three their verbal language becomes a powerful tool they use to express themselves. As their identity and independence develops they begin to question everything around them and are constantly asking, “why?”. As they develop a better sense of time, children of the two’s separate from parents with greater ease. Since they begin to better understand a daily flow and others’ routines, they are more comfortable accepting transitions and soothe themselves with their ability to make predictions about what is coming next.

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Teachers prepare environments that encourage interactions between the children. The children exchange knowledge as they engage in conversations. The teachers ask open-ended questions to deepen children’s discussions of topics and to support the evolution of children’s theories. Teachers’ and children’s’ intentionality’s are shared with one another as a network of ideas is developed enabling both to be active participants of the learning process. While your child learns new words and fine-tunes their articulation they communicate in simple sentences, begin initiating conversations, display a desire to talk about their interests, and can relate personal experiences with others with the support of their teacher. Most children at this age express themselves in sentences and are able to recite simple rhymes and ask questions.

Considering that children of the three’s are still making sense of the world around them using all of their senses our educators continue to expose them to many sensorial materials such as paint and clay. These open-ended materials support the children in developing divergent thinking, problem solving skills, and creativity.

As children’s drawings become more detailed and representational children begin to tell stories through them. This, in turn, helps them to understand that print carries a message and the words we speak can be written and read; that stories have a beginning, middle, and an end. During the year scribbles begin to appear more like symbols and letters, and children may string several of these “letters” together to form words. They become aware of the uses for writing and may dictate words for the teachers to write down. Teachers are able to support this process by setting up provocations around the spaces of the classroom that invite children to explore the world of the written code: books, notepads and writing tools, labels, maps, and more. Tracing names and numbers, categorizing shapes and the recognition of patterns are also introduced to support the development of emergent literacy skills. We support children in the discovery of the meaning print holds by creating provocations and situations that awaken their affinity for and interest toward written communication. To strengthen their growing understanding of language, children are encouraged to recognize key ideas and details of stories, understand positional relations and vocabulary terms as well as learn to develop hypotheses based on observations, questions, and investigations.

While their gross motor skills become stronger activities such as running, throwing and catching a ball, and dancing are a source of great joy. They begin to challenge themselves further and it is common to see them outside in the playground climbing up and jumping down. Children love to feel a sense of accomplishment and putting a puzzle together, painting, and drawing are all ways they demonstrate their growing abilities.

Four’s

Children of the four’s are interested in finding out how everything works. At this stage your child will develop greater self-control and independence and enjoy trying new experiences. Since their vocabulary and pronunciation increases they begin communicating in more complex and compound sentences. Four-year-olds frequently initiate conversations and are less likely to change the subject of conversation to only the areas of personal interest since they are more interested in collaborating and sharing. Because they feel confident to express themselves verbally, they frequently exchange ideas and suggestions. Our teachers invite the children to participate in creating projections and in revisiting their experiences through photographs, discussions, videos, or voice recordings. Children of the fours are also encouraged to get involved during the documentation process and their perspectives are written down and become part of these records.

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At the age of four your child is constructing their knowledge of written language. They want to know what words in their environment say and are able to recognize many letters. By the end of this year many children understand that letters represent the sounds in spoken words and may associate some letters with their sounds. Most children also write some legible letters and know that writing goes from left-to-right and top to bottom. When your child draws or paints they begin to represent detailed aspects of their imagination as well as begin to incorporate letters and words to describe them.

Your child’s capacity for learning math concepts increases at this age. They can successfully use language to compare and describe objects and shapes. Children of the 4’s know days of the week, months and the seasons.

They are able to walk, climb, jump, hop, skip, march and gallop skillfully at this age. They have also improved their ability to throw, catch, kick and bounce balls. Four-year-olds enjoy dancing and are able to move rhythmically and easily. Their fine motor skills have also improved therefore supporting their ability to hold writing tools. As their hand-eye coordination develops, dressing and undressing themselves is mastered.

Four year olds are very curious and use their imaginations to help understand the world around them. They become complex thinkers through predictions, and their teachers provide supportive information and opportunities for experimentations of trial and error observations. Our teachers value and respect these abilities and offer opportunities to explore in spaces that invite the children to utilize the collection of data and graphing, the class of the 4’s begins to use science and engineering practices to better understand their communities, economic and ecosystems as well as the physical earth in which they exist. As the children engage in different explorations where their interests are taken into account, the teachers facilitate learning through questions and providing appropriate tools and materials that will further their research.

As children explore and develop relationships they build an understanding of learn what causes certain feelings and realize that others may react differently to the same situations. Because of this children begin to further progress in more complex social interactions such as joining in organized group play.

Kindergarten

At this age your child becomes more engaged when planning, discussing and analyzing theories from different points of views as well as their observations. They display an awareness of their thought processes and begin to understand the concept of making plans, executing them, and reflecting on results. Throughout their year in Kindergarten, your child will find opportunities to hypothesize ideas, follow through with their theories, reflect and analyze their work, as well as share their findings. Children can negotiate with their peers and discuss options with both care for their own interest as well as understanding others’ interests, thus becoming a thoughtful participant in group projects. Children document their daily experiences in journals and create dictionaries to enhance and support their writing.

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They use their knowledge of letter sounds and the symbols they correspondwith to write sentences and short stories as they communicate their memories, ideas, and learned information. Their writing is constructed of both uppercase and lowercase letters while their verbal expressions begin to sound more sophisticated with the appropriate use of prepositions and interrogatives. As their reading skills emerge, kindergarteners learn to recognize and produce rhyming words. Children develop the ability to isolate beginning, middle and ending sounds as well as segment syllables in words enabling them to blend these parts and read their first words. They recognize growing amounts of sight words that, along with an increased phonological awareness, provide them the skills to work through their first stories. Some children are even able to read simple stories by the end of the year with support from their teachers. Children use computers, smart boards, and scanners as sources of communication and research, as well as audio books and our library to further their understanding of information they have gained.

Numbers and science are present in each child’s learning process. A carpenter’s corner filled with measuring tools supports mathematical concepts. Calendar, digital and analog clocks, calculators, counting tools such as beads, rocks, and straws are some of the tools that support addition, subtraction and counting. At this stage in their development, children’s self-confidence and management skills go hand in hand with their growing academic capabilities and lead to a meaningful year in preparation for elementary school.

Childcare Center Plainfield
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Enrichment Programs

Our advanced enrichment programs are accessible for all students. Learn more
– Core Values
– Mindfulness
– Innovative Computing & Robotics
– Reggie Fitness
– Nature Explore Outdoor classroom
– Atelier
– Grand Piazza exploration
– Spanish exposure
– Music class
– Martial Arts
– Mud days
– Career Exposure
– Special Enrichment (STEM Fair, Fine Arts Festival, Cultural Night, Literacy night)
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Before & After School (6 years – 12 years)

As a family-oriented program, we know the need for childcare before and after school hours. We provide early drop off where children are invited to come to school before the regular day begins to make your lives more manageable. This offer is also available after school, in addition to our location-specific classes like ballet, karate, zumba and soccer.

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Summer Camp

Summer Camp

While summer time is a chance for children to relax, KLA Schools strives to maintain our standard of excellence through meaningful adventures and inspiring surroundings. Each year our programs change to represent the interests of our children. Experiences include weekly Splash Days, cooking classes, continued use of the Atelier as well as a variety of field trips within our communities.

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