The first five years of a child’s life are instrumental in shaping their mind, body and soul. Our approach is to help develop and celebrate each child’s unique abilities by combining key aspects of play-based learning with the child-led or emergent learning approach.
An emergent curriculum is a flexible, constantly evolving curriculum based on teacher observations of children’s emerging interests. It starts with astute faculty who are trained to observe, understand, and then respond to children’s changing interests. Teachers take cues from students and adapt their classroom structure and lesson plans to ensure they cater to the children’s evolving interests. Children can select from multiple choice-filled areas; following their interests and creating their own experiences, they subliminally learn life skills. Blending the emergent learning philosophy with play, our teachers provide appealing stimuli, encourage collaboration and deliver an interactive education by embracing and celebrating children’s innate creativity and inquisitiveness.
Our curriculum has been further enhanced by the meticulous inclusion of the core developmental domains.
Language Development: communicating verbally and non-verbally; from primary sounds and symbols to comprehensive literacy skills.
Cognitive Development: nurturing intellectual development and creativity; from basic sensations to complex logical reasoning.
Social Development / Emotional Intelligence: understanding and controlling one’s own emotions while learning to read others’ moods and feelings and respond in an empathetic and moral manner.
Physical Development: developing movement and motor skills and encouraging the awareness and applications of their senses.
At Westpark, student progress is documented and shared via the LookSee Developmental Screen; a provincially recognized innovative checklist used to record developmental goals for children up to 6 years of age. Teachers observe and record each child’s daily behaviors, skills, achievements and interests which are made available to parents as they partner in their child’s success.