Preschool Age Daycare in Columbus, Delaware, and Sunbury, Ohio
If you are searching for a preschool or daycare in Columbus, Sunbury, or Delaware, Ohio then check out all that Little Buckeye Learning Center has to offer for preschool age children.
Our Preschools Provide a Supportive and Nurturing Environment
Children experience a wealth of learning in their preschool years! At Little Buckeye, our supportive and nurturing relationships with our preschoolers positively influence their development and learning. Fostering warm loving relationships and providing an excellent educational environment for our two and three-year old learners is the heart of our preschool program at Little Buckeye. Children thrive when they are treated with genuine kindness, love, and respect and when they have teachers who individualize their care and learning.
Individualized Learning Approach
We continue our individualized learning approach with our preschool aged learners. Our educators develop specially designed programs just for our two and three-year old students in order to meet each child’s specific developmental needs. From social and emotional growth to cognition, literacy, and language development, our teachers provide a rich and stimulating curriculum designed specifically to foster the rich learning of preschoolers. Our curriculum, the award-winning, research based Learning Beyond Paper, is specially designed to engage your child in meaningful experiences tailored to your child’s personal learning and development.
Commitment to Ohio’s Step Up To Quality Program
Our commitment to Ohio’s Step Up to Quality Program also means that your preschool child will receive the highest level of education available in the state of Ohio. Recognizing that growth occurs best in a safe and loving environment, our educators receive rigorous training and continuing education above the standards of most licensed childcare programs in Ohio. Little Buckeye’s commitment to the Ohio Step Up to Quality program and the additional training it requires ensures that your child will have an amazing education in a loving and safe environment.
Preschool Curriculum
At Little Buckeye, we are proud to incorporate the award-winning, research based Learning Beyond Paper into our program. In addition, our Preschool curriculum and programming follow the whole child philosophy of learning. Every area of your child’s development is intertwined and connected with other areas of development. Therefore, we also thoughtfully develop weekly lesson plans that encompass the following five main content areas in the Ohio Early Learning and Development Standards. In addition, Little Buckeye has added a sixth category for our students, Creative Arts.
Social and Emotional Development
As quickly as they are moving, the preschooler’s concept of self is also changing. Every day they learn new things that change the way they interface with their world. Our curriculum encourages preschoolers to more thoughtfully engage with others by:
- Encouraging play between peers
- Talking about feelings
- Expressing compassion and empathy
- Encouraging role play
- Actions and consequences
- Following directions
Approaches Toward Learning
Our preschool teachers develop weekly lesson plans designed to be adaptable for each child’s individual stage of learning. Tailoring activities to the appropriate level will hold a child’s interest and encourage further exploration. We also encourage curiosity and learning by:
- Encouraging the child to express initiative
- Encouraging inventive play
- Fostering problem solving skills
- Encouraging independence
Cognition and General Knowledge
Preschoolers learn math and science by experiencing the world around them. Sure, we still count and sort but here are some other ways our early learning preschool daycare teachers help your child develop early cognitive skills that will provide an excellent start to a lifetime of learning:
- Early recognition of numbers
- Beginning ability to count
- Pattern recognition
- Taking apart and putting together
- Exploration with tools
- Formulate “why, what, how?” questions in daily interactions
Language and Literacy Development
Our teachers model language and engage preschoolers in conversation almost continually during the day. We combine two-way communication with a print rich environment to encourage progress of verbal skills from single word communication into multi word phrases. Some of the activities we use to develop language skills are:
- Children explore picture books and magazines
- Singing songs and rhymes
- Reading books out loud
- Following more complicated directions
- Using various writing instruments to make meaningful marks on paper
- Encouraging beginning scribbling as the foundation for letter writing
- Speaking in sentences and answering questions
Physical Well-Being and Motor Development
Preschoolers are beginning to experience more refined motor skills. We put these new skills to work in a variety of ways that enhance your child’s entire development, including:
- Moving and dancing to music to feel and experience a steady beat
- Moving and identifying specific parts of the body
- Encouraging awareness of different body parts and how they interact with the space around them.
- Movement and balancing the whole body
- Practicing and perfecting fine motor skills like drawing, writing, cutting
Creative Arts
Creative experiences enhance children’s learning in all of the other areas and are an engaging way to teach cause and effect, problem solving and to give children the time to make internal self-assessments that develop a sense of self. Our art and creative experiences include:
- Exploring and experiencing color and color combinations
- Exploring sensory materials like shaving cream, clay and sponges
- Encouraging more sophisticated pretend play
- Encouraging inventive play
- Exploring more complex art and building materials
- Encouraging production of individual music
- Dancing with scarves and other materials to different kinds of music
