The following are the Learning Centers set up at our day care:

• The Art Area
• Manipulative
• Dramatic Play
• Library Area
• Outdoors
• Discovery Area
• Sand and Water
• Music and Movement
• Cooking
• Computers
• Building Blocks

Art: The Art Area is a place filled with materials that children can enjoy, create and represent their ideas in visual forms. On the table or easel, children can draw, paint, knead, cut, glue, and put together unique products of their own. They can create designs and express what they know and feel in varying artistic media.

Dramatic Play: Drama is storytelling through action, dialogue or both. We provide children with clothing they can use to dress up and pretend, blocks that can serve as props that can transform a city, and puppets that can act out a story. They take on character roles and recreate real-life experiences and as they indulge in the theater arts, they express their feelings, solve problems, think abstractly, and learn to cooperate with others

Library Area: The Library Area is a very important part of the classroom. It is where children gain the foundation for reading and writing. The library is also a place where children can relax and enjoy the wonderful world of children’s books. We encourage children to look at books, listen to stories on tape, retell stories, and to scribble and “write” throughout the day. Our staff read stories to the children every day and by reading, the children are introduced to new ideas while helping them handle problems and encourage love for books.

Discovery Area: The Discovery Area is stocked with interesting materials that are inviting to children’s love of exploration and investigation. It includes basic tools, objects and materials from the natural world. Some of these tools are magnifying glasses, balance scales, and magnets that further augment children’s discovery skills. The Discovery Area is located near the window where children can observe nature and have natural light for growing plants and exploring shadows and reflections. The area helps build vocabulary and language skills, number concepts, patterns and relationships, measurements, data collection, process skills, life sciences, physical sciences, and knowledge of the earth and environment.

Sand and Water: Playing with sand and water involves sensory experiences that appeal to young children. It challenges the children’s minds and promotes all areas of development. When children play with sand and water, they often express their thoughts and feelings especially their imagination. Children strengthen their small muscles as they mold wet sand and scoop water. They develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination by working with props like pouring water into a funnel or sifting sand through a sieve. Their gross motor skills are built up simply by carrying buckets of sand or water outdoors. By careful observations, comparison, measurements, children learn some properties of water – it can be splashed, poured and frozen. As dry solid sand can be sifted, raked, and shoveled, the children learn about volume and capacity. They explore the causes and effects of sand and water, and they can do lot of things with these two as far as their imaginations take them.

Blocks: Wooden blocks naturally appeal to young children because they feel good to the touch, are symmetrical, and invite open-ended explorations. When children construct, create, and represent their experiences with blocks, they grow in each area of development. In the Block Area, children negotiate for materials they want to use, determine how many of them can work in area, care for the materials, and follow the rules for building safely. They also exchange ideas while developing their small muscle by carrying and carefully placing blocks together. They gain strength in their large muscles using hollow blocks, and their hand-eye coordination is improved when they carefully balance blocks to prevent them from tumbling. As children experience the world around them, they form mental pictures of what they see and playing with blocks gives them the opportunity to recreate these pictures in concrete form. Children also learn about sizes, shapes, numbers, orders, areas, lengths, patterns, and weights as they select, build and put away blocks.

Furthermore, we provide the children at our day care with diverse materials appropriate for their age to help them grow in all areas of development. Parental participation is an important component of our program and we foster parent involvement through various parent-child workshops and other parent child activities through out the year – the children receive a very busy and truly enriching program!

Another important program we have is our recent partnership Head Start. This provides program provides free community services to families in need. Our teachers are highly qualified and have many years of experience to ensure that they can provide your children with the ultimate learning environment. We hope that you will stop by and visit us soon. You will see that All My Children Day Care is the right choice for your child!