Curriculum
Nimble Noggins Educational Preschool is for 3-5 year olds.
Active Minds
Teachers at Nimble Noggins engage our students through active learning by providing an academic setting that is filled with exploration, challenges, and new ideas. The weekly curriculum in Nimble Noggins provides consistency while encouraging creativity and the young child’s desire to explore and discover. We believe learning should be a natural, participatory, and most important, FUN process for preschoolers.
Play, fun, and movement are important elements of our program as they also support and augment learning. The love of learning, developed at this age, is important to life-long academic success. We offer a truly exceptional curriculum which is carried through by caring and supportive teachers.
Lessons and skills taught at Nimble Noggins fulfill Arizona Early Learning Standards, and are designed to give our preschoolers the tools they need to create their success. Lessons and centers develop language, numeracy, reading, writing, and problem solving skills that are integral to the growth of the whole child.
Our Curriculum is rich in language opportunities which include stories, poems, finger plays, and special times for children to share ideas and thoughts. We will focus on reading readiness themes to help your child prepare for kindergarten, including letter recognition, letter sounds and sight words. The world of science will also be explored through many hands on experiments. Math concepts will be taught in relevant situations to help develop an internal understanding of numeracy. The academic subject of Social Studies will also be covered as we learn about our own community and other cultures around the world.
We invite you to join us in the great endeavor of establishing positive learning attitudes because these will follow students into adulthood.
Daily Activities Include:
Morning warm-up and stretch
Calendar/ Circle Time
30 min of gymnastics
20 min of dance
Math, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts centers
Self- Choice Exploration
Movement and Literacy
Rhythmic nature of movement mimics the rhythm of language.
Movement and language are both forms of self-expression.
Parts of speech such as verbs, adverbs, and prepositions are reinforced by movement, “Skip quickly around the cones.”
Spatial orientation, necessary for letter recognition and writing, is developed through movement.
Stringing actions together to form sequences of movement is very similar to linking words together to form sentences, and linking sentences to paragraphs.
When children are able to move and act out language there is better understanding and comprehension. Things like suffixes become more relevant; try acting scared versus scary.
Movement and Math
Math can seem very abstract to many children. When paired with something concrete, that they are very familiar with --physical movement, concepts are more easily understood.
Patterns are prevalent in both math and movement.
Counting, skip counting, and other math skills can easily be practiced in a fun way; often without children even realizing they are doing math!
Healthy Bodies
Academics are only part of the story at Nimble Noggins, however, as students also learn from a broad slate of movement activities, such as gymnastics, yoga and dance, which promote brain organization and development.
In fact, research has demonstrated that preschool gymnastics enhances brain development through new neural networks in the brain, making it a perfect fit in our preschool Imagine, creating NEW neural networks while simply doing something that’s fun like gymnastics! Motor development leads to self- confidence and feelings of physical well-being.
Current research has shown that movement and learning are intimately connected and that complex movement helps prepare, organize and develop the brain for what we term “higher learning”.
In addition to the ‘process of learning’, complex movement has also been shown to be connected to the development of the brain’s ‘executive function’ which has been shown to be associated with academic success. Integrative movement has been shown to affect the following:
Focus
Concentration
Problem Solving
Reading
Writing
Abstract Thought
Language
Speech
Behavior
Math
Happy Hearts
Social Development Basic Knowledge & Skills
The combination of rhythmic movement with speech and song is said to affect the areas of the brain having to do with inner speech and impulse control. These areas contribute to language development, self-management, and social skills.
When young children are given the opportunity for movement and physical challenge, they develop a higher self-image and have more confidence.
Environment
Our environment is one that is safe, supports risk-taking, and invites a sharing of ideas. Nimble Noggins helps students develop a deep love and respect for themselves, others, and their environments.
Discipline is part of Happy Hearts
Children have greater respect for their teachers, their peers, their environment and their lessons when they feel safe and sure of what is expected of them. We believe in consistent rules and a gentle reinforcement of those rules.