Our Curriculum

Developed by renowned childhood learning experts, The Project Approach is proven to help children learn and retain essential concepts while engaging their natural curiosity and giving them the freedom and support to explore their interests.

A project is an in-depth investigation of a topic that emerges from the children's interest. Teachers provide focusing activities and common experiences related to the topic that are relevant and meaningful to the children. This unique approach to a hands-on education is integrated into our curriculum and aligned with Illinois Early Learning Standards to ensure the best possible early education for your child.

The work that takes place during projects—asking questions, seeking answers to those questions, representing new knowledge, and sharing that knowledge with others—not only allows children to learn more about their real-world topic of interest, but builds academic and life skills along the way.

Children explore academic concepts and develop skills within the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in ways that are meaningful and age-appropriate. Children develop 21st century skills as they learn to collaborate with their peers, use reasoning and critical thinking skills, and seek solutions to problems.

As much as we value academic development, our program seeks to engage the whole child. With this in mind, we place a large emphasis on social-emotional development. While project work provides children with many opportunities to collaborate with their peers and build their self-confidence, we also incorporate Second Step Social-Emotional Learning into our curriculum. These evidence-based activities help children learn a wide variety of skills and concepts including self-regulation, empathy, and problem-solving skills.

One last aspect of our program that makes us unique is the inclusion of extracurricular activities. Every week children have the opportunity to participate in music, yoga, and Spanish as part of our curriculum.

During music, children enjoy singing and dancing with our degreed music teacher. They explore various musical concepts (rhythm, tempo, pitch, etc.) in a fun, hands-on, and engaging manner. Children also have weekly opportunities to participate in yoga with our certified yoga instructor. Through these sessions they are able to practice strength, flexibility, coordination, focus, calming skills, and self-awareness. Lastly, our children have Spanish two mornings a week with Señora Melissa where they sing songs in Español, practice counting, and learn a variety of phrases and vocabulary words.