Children are born ready and eager to learn. From the start, they are “active participants” in their own learning. Newborns model the facial expressions fo their caregivers and older babies begin to imitate the sounds of adult speech. All this learning happens through playful interactions with the loving adult caregivers in the baby’s life.
DBCC’s Curriculum is modeled on these kind of playful interactions.
Many centers talk about play in their curriculum, but often offer structured lessons based upon a purchased, scripted curriculum or traditional primary-grade direct instruction. DBCC creates a learning environment where children can self-select activities that are created to meet individual needs and strengths of the children in each classroom.
How does play enhance a child’s development?
- Play ensures that children have experience that encourage natural growth in all areas – social, emotional, physical, and cognitive.
- Play allows children practice in taking initiative and responsibility.
- Play ensures that children develop the ability to make and follow rules.
- Play encourages children to learn from each other as well as from the helpful adults in their lives.
- Self-selected play activities encourage children’s natural curiosity and creativity, and encourages the development of life-long, self-directed learners.
- Self-initiated play with peers ensures that children have practice with social problem solving skills.
- The ability to become meaningfully engaged in a topic of interest … affects the development of dispositions to acheive and learn.
- Providing children with opportunities to initiate their own play scenarios ensures that curriculum is culturally relevant.
- Play allows children to proceed at their own pace, observe others, take learning risks, try on different roles, learn basic concepts of physics, mathematics, and science, enhance verbal and language skills, practice social skills, learn problem solving and conflict resolution skills, take responsibility, make choices and decisions, become emotionally resilient, develop critical thinking and listening skills, and be actively engaged.