At Saint Gerard Majella Children's Center, we use play as a medium for teaching and learning. Play based activities complement and enhance intentional teaching, which involves the teachers planning experiences to be based on the children's interests and having a goal and a means to accomplish it.

The teachers use the California's State Preschool Learning Foundations to guide their curriculum planning. They plan age appropriate activitiies and experiences that peak the children's interest as they explore and formulate their own questions and ideas based on those activities or experiences. The teachers support, facilitate, and do further exploration of those questions and ideas through play. 

For example, the teachers observe that the children are pretending to be firefighters throughout the day. During group time, the teachers will pose the question, "What is a firefighter?" The children will begin to say their ideas and the teachers will do further exploration on those ideas. Further exploration can include the uniform of a firefighter and its characteristics. The teachers will begin to introduce the concept of water proof and explore the concept of water proof through sensory experiences, such as water on different surfaces. 

Through our curriculum, our goals are to develop a positive sense of self, respect individuality, respect the rights of others, and encourage creative thinking and problem solving.

Yoga (included in our program)
The children embark on daily yoga adventures with our teachers. Daily the children practice mindful yoga (calming the mind, rainbow breath, ocean breath, balloon breath, etc), practice mantra ohm, and end their yoga session with positive affirmations ("I am strong", "I am brave", "I can do hard things", "I am kind", etc). 

Basketball (Optional - seperate fee) 
The children learn basic basketball skills (dribbling, passing, catching, shooting) while strengthening their bodies through kid-friendly exercises. 

Dance (Optional - seperate fee)  
With professional dance instructors, the children learn a variety of dances: hip hop, ballet, tap, jazz and creative movement.