About Building Blocks Playschool Medicine Hat Alberta Preschool

Building Blocks Childcare Centres is a family-oriented early learning experience for children two to five years of age. We pride ourselves on providing a safe, nurturing and accepting environment in which children are encouraged to develop social, emotional, creative, intellectual and physical skills through play and other structured activities. Building Blocks Playschools is respectful of individual differences in all children and therefore strives to be flexible within a defined framework. We welcome all families equally.

DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE CURRICULUM

We encourage children to develop these skills and attributes through: an integrated learning approach, a balance between structured and unstructured activities, and a carefully designed learning environment.

A. Integrated Learning Approach

We use monthly themes to offer children knowledge about the world around them through stories, songs, art projects, music and movement, centers, field trips, different languages, cooking, and printed and oral language which all relate to the monthly theme. This gives the children repeated exposure to new ideas, an essential component of young children's learning style, but in a slightly different form each time, to stimulate creative thinking on their part.

B. Balance

We encourage children to develop their social, emotional, creative, intellectual and physical skills throughout the day with a balance between structured and unstructured activities. Structured activities include circle time (songs, finger plays, learning different languages, calendar, weather, letters, shapes, colors and numbers), art (teacher directed projects), snack, gym, music time, library time and pre-k time. Unstructured activities occur during center time (free play) open-ended art time, outside on the playground and sometimes in the gym.

C. Environment

Children love to learn about themselves and the world around them. The teacher’s role is to facilitate this natural love for learning. An important aspect of our job is to carefully design the learning environment. All of the activities available to the children are educational and appropriate for preschoolers. During center time or free play, our role as teachers is to facilitate children’s play and not to direct their choices, because it is very important for children to learn to work independently and develop initiative.