Programs
We take children of all ages, including children with special needs. Our programs are as follows:
Infants: 6 weeks to 12 months
Young Toddlers: 12 to 24 months
Toddlers: 2 to 3 years
Preschool: 3 years to 4 years
School Age: 5 years to 12 years
NM Pre-K: 4 year olds who will be eligible for Kindergarten the following year
Children with Special Needs
We openly welcome children with special needs and will make every attempt to provide reasonable accommodations to meet those needs. The center will make an individualized assessment about whether we can meet your child's particular needs without fundamentally altering our program. We are not required to accept children who pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others.
We practice inclusion to the maximum extent possible. As for all the children in the program, the curriculum is based on the needs of the individual child and developed in collaboration with the family, the teaching team, and observation of the child. For children diagnosed with special needs, the staff will work as part of a cross-disciplinary team with the child's specialists to formulate and implement each child's Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or Individualized Family Services Plan (IFSP). We strive for a curriculum for all children that is developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive, with the recognition and acceptance of the child's special abilities, and knowledge and respect for the individuals' uniqueness, including the disability.
Curriculum
We use a curriculum that is age appropriate for both children and classrooms called the New Mexico Early Learning Guidelines. We use a collection of approaches to make our programs interesting as well as providing a learning process toward reading, math, science, art, writing skills, and social skills, as well as small and gross (large) motor skills.
This curriculum includes child-initiated teacher-directed activities and experiences offered to young children that support and enrich their development physically, emotionally, socially, and cognitively. Each classroom has weekly lesson plans, posted in the classroom. These plans contain a number of activities, designed to foster each child's development, and the development of the group as a whole. Lesson plans may be changed in order to accommodate the children's changing interests.
Each classroom is set up in centers, which include blocks, dramatic play, library, gross motor, manipulative play, math, science and art. Outdoor play is important to a child's physical development and is included in both the morning and the afternoon schedules. Self-selection or "free-play" is a daily part of the curriculum and means that a child has the opportunity to choose in which center he or she actively participates. This promotes creative expression and development of important social skills.
