At Sandy Hill Preschool, we believe children learn best through play. Children teach themselves through play when given time, space and materials. Play allows children to express ideas, make choices, experiment and explore. Our staff extend play through encouragement, modeling and conversation. We choose creative art, block play, dramatic play and manipulatives over worksheets and computer games.
We believe 3-D is better than 2-D for preschool children. The individual child is the first priority of our program. All planning, preparation and setup of classrooms are done with this in mind. The teacher works toward discovering the needs of each student and assists that child to grow and develop according to his/her own interests and needs. This includes social, emotional, spiritual and physical growth. We do not emphasize specific learning goals which the whole class is expected to attain at the same time, rather we look at individual goals for each child. The classroom is set up to encourage exploration, creativity and self-directed learning. It is organized into activity areas: quiet area, art area, dramatic play area, block area. There is a wide variety of learning materials from which to choose. Materials are arranged so the child can find them easily and put them away again. Emphasis is placed on using as many senses as possible in the learning process.
