Beginning A Lifetime Love Of Learning
Our desire is to invest in the lives of children by providing the best learning experiences during early childhood years. Our children will build confidence, creativity, and critical thinking skills. We strive for all children to have a love for learning.
Important Areas Of Your Child’s Developement
Social/Emotional
Social and emotional development is essential for school readiness. Hawthorn will help your child develop social and emotional skills such as managing feelings, making friends, sharing, and getting along with others by modeling behaviors and positive reinforcement.
Cognitive
We offer your children choices, ask questions, practice counting…all important activities for valuable qualities for school and life; thinking, memory, and attention.
Language
Language development is critical for your children’s overall development. We will spend time talking, singing, and engaging in conversation with your child. Encouraging children to express their thoughts and needs, share ideas, comprehend language and follow directions are just a few of the important aspects in their language development.
Physical
Physical development is rapid in young children and needs special care and development. We provide fun activities that promote gross and fine motor skills. Indoor and age appropriate playground activities promote balance and the ability to run, jump, and hop. Fine motor skills are developed such as the very young grabbing for objects and as they progress holding a crayon, learning to tie their shoes, or learning the correct way to hold and cut with scissors.
The Arts
Art is a great way for children to express their ability to create and communicate. Hawthorn provides ample opportunities daily for children to explore the visual arts, music, dance, and drama to stimulate imagination and creative thinking. Our youngest love to dance and sing songs. Toddlers and preschoolers enjoy finger painting because they enjoy the process of creation and the gooey mess! They also love using other materials in their art such as feathers, glitter, string, tissue paper. Young children feel good while they draw, color, and paint as art helps boost self confidence. Dramatic play is also an excellent way for children to develop their imagination and creativity. In our classrooms we promote dramatic play by providing toys, props and costumes for children to use.
Social Studies
Social Studies concepts are learned by children observing their surroundings: their home, daycare, grocery store, and community park. We invite special guests from our neighborhood such as COSI and the Safari Zoo to broaden their knowledge and experience. We read books about foreign lands. Our children learn to develop personal responsibility, for example by picking up their toys in the classroom or helping during snack time. They learn to work in small groups, accept differences, and resolve conflicts; all valuable in helping children become good citizens in our society.
Mathematics
Children learn early math skills best by engaging in hands-on games and projects. We work to make math a fun part of every preschooler’s day. Our children love to count objects, play games of take-away, measure various materials, march with counting, and sort objects. Preschoolers love to interact with shapes and conquer puzzles. All of these activities help to enhance mathematical awareness.
Science & Technology
Children learn problem solving through science and technology. It is important to learn and discover technology at an early age. Technology is used to complement learning at Hawthorn. Children love to discover through hands-on experiments. We encourage children in science exploration to engage, explain, and evaluate. These are important skills in life long learning.
Literacy
Our youngest children will learn to imitate sounds, learn new words, recite rhymes, and listen to and repeat stories. As children progress, they will start to recognize and write letters and numbers and develop a love for reading and writing.
English Language Acquisition
We want to ensure that our children who speak English as a second language attain English proficiency. We strive for all Hawthorn children to demonstrate progress in listening and understanding English and well as demonstrating progress in speaking English.