The Island Philosophy
Mother daughter owned - The Island is a licensed preschool offering an early childhood program for toddlers and preschool age children. It is a program of planned experiences designed to meet the child’s individual needs: personal, social, emotional, physical and educational.
The Island allows and encourages the child to develop at his/her own rate. Each child is guided to find their own uniqueness, and to blend that uniqueness with others in order to discover their own potential and personal achievements. It is our goal to prepare each child for “life” as well as future education. Before a child develops a love of learning, a child must develop a love of oneself. A healthy self-esteem is easier to achieve at a child’s age and the child is more likely to concentrate freely on playful learning. To accomplish this a child must be allowed to explore and experiment without rigid restrictions and be given much praise and approval by sincere adults.
The Island believes a child will flourish if allowed special time for sharing, for expressing feelings and for showing off personal accomplishments. Our program offers children a safe and place that is theirs to explore and manipulate while trained staff are close at hand lending support and nurturing along the way.
Curriculum
The Island follows The Rhode Island Early Learning and Development Standards. Using this as a launch point, our dedicated staff can capitalize on the organic moments of the child’s interest. This excitement of learning is captivated and facilitated in order to get the most out of the opportunity. The curriculum is carried out within a “planned free play” environment, which provides the setting for exposing and introducing children to various age-appropriate, self-directed learning experiences. The use of such a setting assumes that children learn more when the child selects and initiates activities and experience rather thanwhen adults dictate. Children need repeated and varied experiences in order for appropriate learning to take place. The Island curriculum and theme concepts are chosen by devoted and educated staff, considering the individual needs of each child.
The Island classroom contains various learning centers that the child is able to choose at will during free play. These learning centers contain a variety of activities, materials and adult guidance geared toward developing a certain skill and to encourage imagination, creativity, expressive language, problem solving, personal satisfaction and the pure joy of learning.
