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| Nursery Program Overview |
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The nursery program at Kadima allows our youngest students to learn through their own experiences, trial and error, repetition, imitation, and identification. Children are offered guidance and encouragement in a safe and emotionally supportive environment. Our curriculum invites play, movement and active exploration, and provides a broad array of stimulating experiences within a consistent framework of routines. We emphasize relationships with children and adults as an essential contribution to the quality of the children's experiences. We incorporate core Jewish values - Tzedakah (charity), Kavod (respect, honor), Gemilut Chasadim (acts of kindness) - into all our activities. Questions about God and the wonders of nature are encouraged at every opportunity. It is our hope that our young children grow into compassionate and caring individuals who are proud of their heritage and secure in their identity.
Young children thrive on exploration and creativity. Their imaginations and curiosity give them great energy and creative potential. They need opportunities to develop and express these capacities. At this age, friendships begin to develop as well as a refined ability to communicate with other children and adults. Experiences that promote initiative, creativity, autonomy, and self-esteem nurture their social and emotional development. We provide opportunities to be responsible, to make significant choices, and to be challenged in positive ways that support children's growth and development.
Through daily routines, a center based classroom, thematic units, library and physical education programs, and both large and small group activities, our nursery curriculum fosters the growth of the developmental milestones of the nursery age child. These milestones include:
Language Development and Communication
Expression of Feelings: Awareness of own feelings and feelings of others; shows empathetic concern for others; verbalizes feelings often; exhibits contrasting moods; expresses emotions with increasing control; shows pride in creation and production.
Interest in Others: Begins to realize others have rights and privileges; gains greater enjoyment from peer play and joint exploration; is aware of others' feelings; exhibits impulse control and self-regulation in relation to others; enjoys small group activities; begins to see benefits of cooperation; identifies self with children of the same age.
Self Awareness: Shows strong sense of self as an individual (as evidenced by "No" to adult requests); experiences self as a creative doer and explorer; becomes capable of self-evaluation and has beginning notions of self (good, bad, pretty, funny); uses names of self and others; makes attempts at self-control; identifies body parts.
Motor Skills and Eye-Hand Skills: Uses crayons and markers to scribble; walks up and down stairs and jumps off one step; kicks a ball; stands on one foot; threads beads; draws shapes; stands and walks on tiptoes; walks up stairs one foot at a time; handles scissors; imitates horizontal writing/coloring strokes.
Physical, Spatial, and Temporal Awareness: Dresses self with simple garments (hat, slippers); asserts independence ("Me do it."); uses words tomorrow and yesterday in appropriate context; identifies familiar objects by touch when eyes are closed or covered; figures our which child is missing by looking at children present.
Purposeful Action and Proper Use of Varied Objects: Classifies, labels and sorts objects by group (hard versus soft, large versus small); helps dress and undress self; uses toys appropriately(blocks to build, pots and pans to cook); uses writing instruments to scribble or draw; washes and dries hands and face using water and towels. |
