At Alpaquitas, we believe in learning through play. Play is the serious work of young children. That is how they learn to understand the world. At Alpaquitas our curriculum focuses on activities and skill development.

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Through a play-based learning approach, children are presented with themes throughout the year. Some of these themes include:

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• All About Me - families, body parts, emotions

• Plants - parts of a plant, what plants need to grow

• Life cycle of animals

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Teachers are able to follow the themes of particular interest to their class. Recent emergent themes include community helpers, Peru, and weather. Each area of the classroom embodies the current theme, which is fundamental to the play-based learning philosophy at Alpaquitas.

 

Children are born with natural impulses to explore; play-based learning allows children to learn naturally. They understand their world best through hands-on, sensory-based experiences that allow them to actively participate, get messy, and make meaning of both the familiar and the new.

 

Group play leads to social interactions, providing opportunities to build social-emotional competence. When they play together, children  talk, negotiate, take turns, explain, compromise, practice self-control, and experience shared joy, frustration, and wonder. When conflict arises, children’s play can lead to expressing emotions, problem-solving, flexibility, and higher-level thinking.  Play allows ESL students to develop their English language skills through natural interactions.

 

With the guidance of teachers, play allows children to naturally develop important social-emotional, language and academic skills. They practice social-emotional skills as they take turns sharing materials. They use math skills when they count the items, sort them into categories, and use the materials to create designs and patterns. It’s also a science lesson: using trial and error, they learn about physics when they successfully balance the tower or determine which shapes can roll. They can also sort the animals by their species, habitat or other attributes.

 

These experiences help young children grow into older children and adults who have open-minded, nuanced views of the world.