Our Philosophy & Curriculum
The Lexington Public Schools Integrated Preschool is designed to promote the physical, social-emotional, cognitive, and language development of children. Every child is a unique person with an individual pattern and timing of growth. We believe in respecting and responding to each child’s learning preference. We take pride in our program’s ability to foster positive feelings towards learning. We strive for excellence through a developmentally appropriate, nurturing environment with highly trained staff and exceptional and creative curriculum.
The curriculum of the Lexington Public Schools Integrated Preschool follows The Guidelines for Preschool Curriculum Experiences based on the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and the educational approaches recommended by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Our preschool addresses skill development through the development of play skills and direct teaching. We follow an interdisciplinary thematic approach with units that revolve around meaningful aspects of children’s lives. We use age-appropriate materials/activities and implement a variety of specific teaching strategies and methods to target children’s individual learning styles. Our curriculum, Tools of the Mind, is explained in detail in the subsequent link.The classroom environment is designed to be stimulating and motivating by utilizing a wide range of both teacher-created and purchased materials and activities. https://toolsofthemind.org/learn/what-is-tools/
The teachers in this program are highly skilled at serving as guides and facilitators. Play is a young child’s “work” as they touch, manipulate, and experiment with materials, explore and observe the environment, and interact with adults and one another. Children are also highly encouraged to initiate their own activities and learning. Observations of the children at work and play allow the teachers to present additional challenges to assist individual children in pushing their thinking further. Children are never expected to compete with or match other children’s rate of growth or development.
All of these components help to create a relaxing, non-stressful, yet challenging environment where children learn at their own individual stage of development. Ultimately, the goal of our preschool is to develop a positive self-image and a love of learning. In the preschool program you will NOT see highly structured, teacher directed lessons, workbooks, worksheets, coloring books, or similarly structured materials as a regular day-to-day part of the curriculum. Videos a re occasionally used to accompany a theme or skill area.
The classroom day is broken into several blocks to meet the needs of the whole child while taking into consideration children’s attention spans, physical, and emotional capabilities.
