The curriculum at Pejepscot Day School is an eclectic one, mostly developed on site using a variety of materials and methods. Our themes vary from year to year even though we are addressing the same basic goals, which are aligned with the state of Maine “early childhood learning guidelines.”
Many resources are used to plan and write our themes and curriculum. We incorporate many early childhood practices while addressing the philosophy of our own program.
Included in our program are goals for:
- Gross and fine motor development
- Receptive and expressive language acquisition
- Healthy social/emotional growth
- Exposure to creative arts
- Cognitive expansion
Process-Oriented, Experiential Opportunities
Our program is based on developmental growth and ability so that the goals chosen for each child in each classroom take into account the age-related capacity of that child. Our activities are geared to be process-oriented, utilizing a combination of open-ended experiential opportunities as well as teacher directed projects focusing on direction following. Outdoor play is included almost every day, year round.
We believe that in order to have a relevant curriculum, which is developmentally appropriate, we need to constantly be assessing our goals for the program, classrooms and children. We use a wide variety of measures to evaluate whether or not we are meeting the needs of children, as well as if the children are progressing along the expected continuum. Some of these tools include checklists, observations, parent-teacher conferences, and outside screenings and observations.