Academics: Where Young Panthers Thrive

Early Learning Center Experience

The Early Learning program provides a nurturing environment that inspires delight in learning and develops social-emotional competencies essential to further success in school.

Our program is designed from a developmental perspective, which means that teachers meet children where they are as individuals. As psychologist Dan Gilbert writes in Stumbling on Happiness, “People are happiest when they’re appropriately challenged to achieve difficult but attainable goals.” The curriculum and approach to instruction are informed by NAEYC, the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Academic success in later years is based on the foundation of an Early Childhood program that recognizes the equal importance of physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development.

Cognitive Development

Lessons and activities in language, math, science, and social studies are intentionally designed by teachers to be open-ended to allow children to ask and answer questions in different ways and solve problems with multiple strategies and solutions. Individual differences and cultural experiences are celebrated.

The Role of Play

Studies of children around the world show that when preschool experiences include lots of child-initiated, free-choice activities, supported by a variety of equipment and materials, these children had better cognitive performance at age 7 than their peers. Pretend play strengthens cognitive capacity, including sustained attention, memory, logical reasoning, literacy skills, imagination, and creativity. Play also supports the understanding of emotions, as well as the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking, inhibit impulses, control one’s behavior, and take another person’s perspective

Photos courtesy of Lindsay Kammerzelt Photography.