Safe. Comfortable. Valued. Children can only learn if they first feel safe, comfortable, and valued enough to take risks. Magical Journey Learning Center takes great care to create an environment in which a skilled teacher meets your child’s need for affection, attention, and approval with enthusiasm. Your child is individually and warmly welcomed every day, setting the tone for a magical day of discovery. Children’s work is prominently displayed on our walls – a public affirmation that their learning is important and valued. Children create a personal history in their classroom, collectively creating their own special place, where the real work is done.
Strong social and emotional development improves children’s ability to learn. helping them learn how to identify both their own and others’ emotions, in turn helping them identify their needs. This builds self-confidence as a child takes the first steps towards self-advocacy. While children at this age are beginning to develop a sense of self, they also become more aware of their friends. This is demonstrated as children progress from parallel play (playing side-by-side with a friend) to associative play (all doing the same thing, but individually) and cooperative play (playing with each other for a common goal). Magical Journey teachers explicitly teach young children how to interact appropriately with friends, celebrate similarities and differences in people, and resolve interpersonal conflicts. These skills also lay a strong foundation for being able to feel empathy and compassion towards others and handle academically challenging situations.
Young children learn to play and play to learn. Our structured play includes circle time, centers, songs, individual play, outdoor play and dramatic/fantasy play. Teachers use these various methods of play to teach pre-literacy skills such as letters of the alphabet, letter sounds, early phonics skills, print awareness, narrative skills, and vocabulary. Children also are taught number recognition, patterns, counting, shapes and spatial sense, and problem-solving. Physical and sensory play teaches academic concepts while simultaneously improving dexterity and gross motor skills. Our Little Dipper curriculum also incorporates yoga to develop gross motor skills. The mind-body connection is paramount when crafting learning experiences for young children. Magical Journey Learning Center uses developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) to guide children along the cognitive continuum of skills, individualizing for each unique child. Our playtime is serious business!