Early Childhood
University Liggett School’s Early Childhood program is inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to learning. The classroom environment is designed to be a warm and inviting place, inspiring and supporting children’s exploration and learning. Our youngest students are encouraged to draw upon their innate curiosities, empowering them to ask questions and explore both independently and collaboratively their understanding of the world and their place in it. Numeracy and literacy are incorporated into early childhood classrooms. Student interest and provocations unveil the concepts to be explored. Project work engages students’ interests, encouraging them to ask big questions and investigate their wonders. Collaboration on short- and long-term projects, decided upon by both the students and the teachers, allows the children to purposefully investigate a topic and access and organize information.
Literacy The University Liggett School’s early childhood literacy program cultivates an environment that produces effective communicators who experience a variety of literary forms, inspiring a lifelong love of language. The goals of literacy in the program focus on developing students’ receptive and expressive language development, with the Michigan Early Childhood Standards of Quality serving as a guide. Concepts of print and constructing meaning from text are introduced. Children gain alphabetic knowledge through the text-rich environment and classroom experiences. Children interact with teachers and materials to increase their understanding of text. Children will demonstrate an emerging understanding of writing as a way to communicate feelings and knowledge.
More specifically, the early childhood literary experience provides learners with access and exposure to a wide variety of literary materials. Children in early childhood are able to express ideas and feelings through their growing expressive language. Children can repeat rhymes and songs with their receptive language skills, and the text-rich environment helps introduce letters. Their expanding vocabulary is also developed. Pictures are interpreted meaningfully as cues to what is happening in a text or story as students show interest in stories and books. Children are able to draw simple analogies from their own experiences and share with their classmates. Children practice categorization. As they begin to recognize some letters, children find their own name in print. The children also begin to express their ideas with scribbles and writing to communicate to others.
2024-2025 ULS Curriculum Guide
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