We are now accepting applications for this coming 2020-2021 school year. Currently, we have openings for 5 Infants, 3 Two-year old’s, and 3 Three-year old’s in our beautiful Georgetown location. These spaces will go very quickly! There is typically a waiting list for our Infant/Toddler groups. Please give us a call to reserve a virtual tour of the center!
Programs Objectives for Children at our Child Care Centre in Washington DC
2 Years Old
Toddlers begin to assert some independence but are still very reliant on the comfort and security offered by those in charge. At this age, they are exploring cause and effect, self-help skills, and learning effective communication and social skills. Some of these learning objectives include Cognitive Development, Critical Thinking Skills, Personal Development, and Social Development, etc.
Language and Literacy: Our early learners at Early Steps will learn to express, communicate, and comprehend the Spanish language through verbalizing needs/ wants, storytelling, rhymes, songs and learning the Spanish alphabet, letters to sounds.
Cognitive Development: When exploring their cognitive capacities, these Early Learners differentiate between similarities and differences between objects, classification, and objects in a series.
Social/Emotional Development: Moods swings are a hallmark of a two-year-old’s emotional life. One minute, a child is happy and playful; the next, he/she is angry and sulking. The goal is for children to feel loved, valued, competent, and learn to trust others. They need to develop positive feelings about themselves, begin to make friends, recognize and accept one’s feelings, and appropriately express those feelings. Develop self- help skills, resiliency, and independence. We will introduce them to the concept of taking turns. Sharing, at this age, is a challenging concept for them to understand, and we work towards this goal.
Science and Mathematics: Children will learn counting skills and the introduction to shapes and colors. These lessons help develop their critical thinking and communication skills. Children will do many creative projects that are ‘play-based’ in mathematics. They will explore nature with a hands-on approach and focus on their five senses: touching, seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling.
Fine Motor Skills: To help the development of fine motor skills, children will work with a wide variety of manipulatives that will stimulate their fine motor control such as stringing, buttoning, zipping, painting, puzzles, building with manipulations, and much more. Using these developmental skills brings with it stronger abilities for a child to attend to basic self-care tasks and pre-writing skills.
Gross Motor Skills: Toddlers seem to be always on the go! As children move through this stage, they will learn to control larger movements (his/her entire body) such as hopping, swinging, throwing a ball overhead, running, climbing steps. This development brings with it some ability for a child to attend to some basic self-care tasks.
2.5 Years Old
Our Center of integral Development chooses for the concept of Cycles of Learning. The first cycle includes the period 2.5 to 3 years old, our center of integral Development offers an individualized attention, besides satisfying his/her basic needs, developing affective stable and permanent links taking part in a sure and predictable environment, but simultaneously diversely and richly in experiences of learning.
3 Years Old
The instruction for 3-year old’s is active following, a guided pedagogy and didactic style of active listening for any given task. We are keeping in mind all the areas of developmentally age-appropriate tasks. Our area of focus is to learn stronger bilingual language arts, story webbing, phonemic awareness in both English and Spanish. We also focus on incorporating primary writing skills, collaborative building strategies for mathematics, practical earth sciences, self-help skills, and critical thinking skills.
We will emphasize the development of all these areas described above by incorporating learning through play, teaching resiliency, and emotional intelligence.
The entire curriculum is based on the bilingual teaching..
4 & 5 Years Old
Learning for children that are four and five years old is more actively elaborate and dynamic! Keeping in mind the child’s age, their social skill set, didactic learning ability, and strong language vocabulary, we further challenge their areas of social and cognitive development.
We prepare them to enter kindergarten by eclipsing the State Standards and educational quality goals, competency skills, and language fluency! A majority of our students begin reading and ready to springboard into the Public Education Systems.
School-Age Care 6- 10 Years Old
School-aged children come with their uniqueness, abilities, and social attributes ready to learn more! We provide supplemental personal instruction, structured homework guidance, supervision with ample room for self-guided workgroups. Our goal is to offer enrichment studies in Fine Arts, Music, Drama, and STEM, but most of all, we teach Spanish!
Typical Daily Schedule
Your child’s daily activities are balanced to include ample time for rigorous play, eating, and resting. In our daily schedules for our different classes, you will see that our schedules are very flexible. The well-being of our children is our first concern at all times. If children are tired or upset, teachers vary their plans. Individual children are allowed to rest if they do not want to participate in an activity. In working with young children, it is always essential to plan a program that will interest and stimulate them. It is equally important to be ready to vary that program following the needs and moods of the children.
Food in Our Centers: The Key is Flexibility
During the day, we provide breakfast, lunch, and snacks, and we will have children drink milk and water from a cup. We will communicate each day with you to make sure your child is eating sufficient amounts and variety of foods, and we want our toddlers to extend their acceptance of different kinds of foods. We are aware that they need time to feel comfortable with changes in their menus.
Learning for Infants & Toddler’s
As children come into this program, they may still be following their schedules. Allowing for those extra or longer naps and extra snacks may be necessary for the child’s well-being. We believe that schedules should be designed to preserve the children and should not interfere with their enjoyment and comfort. And we want to emphasize that it is a very flexible guide only, to give some structure to the day.
