About Our Preschool
Our Mission
At Chilkat Valley Preschool we seek to strengthen children and the ties between family, community, and peers. Through a constructive play-based learning approach we strive to develop a life long, love of learning, as well as, readiness for the next level of education.
Our Vision
Our vision at Chilkat Valley Preschool is to have a community where all children feel loved, respected, and encouraged to develop to their fullest potential.
Our program is planned to promote positive growth in the lives of all children. We will adopt a holistic play-base approach that enables each child to develop their social, physical, emotional and intellectual abilities. We know that each child is unique and special and positive early childhood experiences are instrumental for a child’s overall development in later life. Our program will promote and maintain a safe environment that creates an opportunity for children to develop and grow in a positive manner through appropriate role modeling and education.
Our Curriculum
Our curriculum is developmentally appropriate, emergent, and constructive. This means that our curriculum:
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Is appropriate to the developmental stage of each child.
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Is concerned with the process of learning rather than the product.
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Allows the child to set his/her own learning pace.
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Builds on the child’s own interests and abilities.
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Encourages the child to question, hypothesize, experiment, discover, solve problems and develop cognitive processes.
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Recognizes the value of play in a child’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development.
Classroom themes, projects and activities often emerge from the children's interests or from events in the life of the classroom or larger community. For example, in September Haines' streams are filled with salmon and the woods are full of ripe berries, so we venture outdoors for hands-on experience, then bring these themes back into the classroom with related stories, drama, science explorations, cooking projects, and art.
Children are encouraged to construct their own ideas and theories about their world through play, experimentation, and social interaction rather than simply receiving the information from adults. For example, children might explore the properties of weight and motion by constructing ramps and rolling objects; they learn much more through this hands-on experience than they would from an adult's verbal explanation or demonstration of these principles. Teachers observe and plan carefully to provoke, enhance and extend children's learning.
Play is the developmental task of children through which children come to know the world and their place in it. Through play and planned activities, children experiment, problem-solve, develop social skills, and creatively construct knowledge that is the basis for further learning.
