SUNDANCE PLAYSCHOOL
Outstanding Childcare
Sundance Playschool is a small, Reggio - inspired, licensed group daycare set in a lovely character home bordering Oak Bay, Victoria City, and Saanich.
SUNDANCE PLAYSCHOOL
Reggio Inspired
The Reggio Philosophy Believes:
-that children should have some control over the direction of their learning.
-that children should be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, and observing.
-that children have a relationship with other children and with material items and that they should be allowed to explore.
-that children should have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.
Relationships
Consistent, secure, responsive, and respectful relationships with caring adults are vital to children’s well-being.
Early learning refers to the emerging and
expanding of young children’s physical,
intellectual, emotional, social, and creative
capacities.
All children are born with a curiosity about themselves, other people, and the world around them.
As they grow, they develop both their capacity and dispositions to learn through supportive relationships with other children and adults in their environments.
Early learning is the foundation for lifelong learning, and the basis for individual, social, economic, and environmental well-being.
HEALTHY ENVIRONMENTS
EARLY LEARNING
We believe:
Environments that support physical activity are needed for healthy child development. Physical activity enhances brain development, coordination, social skills, gross motor skills, emotions, leadership, and imagination. Supporting children to engage in physical activity also helps them to build confidence and self-esteem, and to learn to enjoy being active.
Natural environments play a particularly important role in promoting children’s early learning. Exposure to natural environments strengthens children’s relationship to nature, building the physical, social, emotional, and intellectual connections that are a necessary motivation for environmental stewardship.
RELATIONSHIPS
Consistent, secure, responsive, and respectful relationships with caring adults are vital to children’s well-being.
To promote a sense of well-being and belonging, our teachers provide an environment where your child can:
* feel safe and respected
* learn ways to keep themselves healthy, including nourishment, sleep, and physical activity
* feel confidence in and control of their bodies
* enjoy being and choose to be physically active
* understand and follow routines
* feel a sense of security, self-respect, and self regulation
* express a sense of personal well-being
* recognize, accept, and express a wide range of emotions, thoughts, and views
* adapt to and enjoy experiences of change, surprise, and uncertainty
* feel valued and explore their own strategies for learning
* build healthy relationships with both adults and children
DEVELOPMENT
To promote the development of languages and literacies, our teachers provide an environment where your child can:
* communicate thoughts and experiences creatively using many different forms of expression
* develop diverse language abilities and the capacity to communicate with others in many ways
* be curious about vocabulary, concepts, and written language
* engage in sound and word play
* use numbers, measurement, and form in meaningful contexts
* experience the stories and symbols of their own and other cultures
* express their own points of view and reflect on the views of others
OUR PHILOSOPHY
PLAYING
In playing, children express, explore, combine, and extend what they have learned about the sights, sounds, smells, and textures of the world around them; about the words, signs, symbols, and customs of their language and culture; and about their own and other people’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, and sensations.
Play is vital to young children’s daily lives and promotes their healthy physical and intellectual development. When children play with blocks, sand, and water, they are learning the basis of logical and mathematical thinking, scientific reasoning, and cognitive problem-solving. During active play children learn to have fun while being physically active.
Regular physical activity through play allows children to release their energy, display calmer behaviour during the day, and sleep better at night. During group play activities with their peers, children are building relationships, combining ideas, compromising, developing oral narratives, and learning to take the perspective of others—key elements of social competence, creative thinking, imagination and early literacy.
EXPLORATION/CREATIVITY
To promote exploration and creativity, our teachers provide an environment where your child can:
* explore the world using their bodies and all their senses
* build, create, and design using different materials and techniques
* actively explore, think and reason
* identify and try possible solutions to problems in meaningful contexts and situations
* be creative and expressive in a variety of ways
* develop a sense of wonder for natural environments
* express a zest for living and learning
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
To promote social responsibility and respect for diversity, our teachers provide
an environment where your child can:
* explore and learn about family, community and the wider world
* express a positive regard for others and respect for self, others, and property
* participate in the making, following, and re-working of rules, rituals, and procedures in their everyday world
* understand fairness both for themselves and others
* learn to appreciate and celebrate diversity
* understand that all persons have value; accept and welcome individual differences
* understand how their own actions may affect nature and the planet
* show responsibility for themselves and begin to show responsibility for others
A LITTLE ABOUT SUNDANCE
We are a licensed group daycare in a beautiful character home close to Royal Jubilee Hospital. We take a maximum of 16 children between the ages of thirty months and five years old.
Sundance is Reggio-inspired. This means that we believe that beautiful, natural materials foster a sense of peace and wonder in a child. We avoid plastic as much as possible (besides lego and buckets), and commercialized products, such as Disney (although they can sing 'Let It Go' as much as they want).
Instead of being theme-centred, we observe the children's interests and set up provocations to inspire children to take their interests higher and their questions deeper.
We respect children and their projects. Activities are saved for as long as the children feel they need to work on them, and children are given all the time they need to practice what they're determined to master.
Socio-emotional learning is important to us. Before they enter kindergarten, we want children to know that they have rights, everyone has rights (including the ladybugs in our gardens), and are comfortable speaking to adults and children about what they need.
Friendship and play and spending time in nature are the ways children learn negotiation, creativity, experimentation, and so much language. It gives them a chance to test theories, experience euphoria, handle frustration, and lose themselves in the flow of peaceful, meaningful work. They learn the value of empathy and kindness in themselves and others. A safe, respected, loved child is a healthy child.
Because we respect and enjoy children, we spend a lot of time in conversation- not correcting them, or quizzing them to test what they know, but in actual conversation, sharing laughter, and wonder, songs and stories from life, things that puzzle us or make us feel.
Instead of saying 'no' to children's ideas, we think, 'how can I say yes?' Our goal is to enable enough hands-on, sensory play- in a peaceful, unhurried, environment where children feel safe- for them to have a broad, deep, solid foundation of experience and experiment. Higher, symbolic thought is only achievable when we can reference it back to actual, physical experience.
Finally, non-nappers are welcome. :)
ALYSON CULBERT
Director
COLLEEN NEIBERGALL
Manager
RANJOT KAUR
Early Childhood Educator
