Programs

Infants Curriculum

Your baby will receive a developmentally appropriate curriculum, including individualized care and build a trustful relationship with our teachers, giving them emotional support to participate in shared activities and guide their exploration and learning, including:

Group Time to Strengthen Relationships
Share smiles and joy, with song singing, nursery rhymes, book reading, finger play, and games which foster your baby’s interest in books, music and their communication and listening skills. No one plays peek-a-boo better than us!

Discovery Time to Explore Senses
Discover new sensations, with various textures, water play, art activities and toy manipulation to enhance your baby’s perception skills, hand-eye coordination and manipulative abilities.

Movement Time for Growth and Development
Practice emerging skills in a safe environment, with rolling over, pulling up, crawling, first step milestones and enjoy outdoor activities including playgrounds and neighborhood walks to help your child’s development. We will cheer on your baby’s accomplishments!

Toddlers Curriculum

Each toddler wants autonomy! The toddler’s increased abilities intensify his/her active exploration of the environment and expand his/her learning opportunities. However, as the toddler ventures out to discover and learn new things, his/her need for protection and safety continues to exist. At Bright Kids Academy, we understand the polarity of a toddler’s behavior and while we encourage his/her exploration, learning, and independence, we also offer him/her the reassurance he/she needs.

Group Time
The toddler’s emerging language skills and developing cognitive abilities are evident during our group times and are encouraged and supported by our teachers. Our book reading, finger play, nursery rhymes, and songs provide each toddler with opportunities to practice the words he/she already knows, to acquire new ones, and to develop his/her listening and communication skills. We are here to help, and her name is one of the words we are learning this time!

Discovery Time
The knowledge a toddler has already attained enhances his/her exploration and learning. Through sensory play, manipulation of toys, and other learning activities, each toddler develops his/her ability to make connections and to learn from the environment. Supported by our teachers, each toddler discovers new things about the world around him/her and builds understanding of how things work.

Art Time
Art projects are fun activities for a toddler! Finger and brush painting engage each toddler in an enjoyable experimentation with colors and other painting materials and foster his/her developing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination abilities. At Bright Kids Academy, our teachers concentrate on offering each toddler the experience of creating something new, encouraging his/her sense of creativity.

Dramatic Play Time
Interest in playing out scenarios emerges at this age. Familiar and routine activities, such as cooking in the kitchen, putting the baby to sleep, and playing the doctor, are some of the toddler’s favorite scenarios. At Bright Kids Academy, our teachers recognize the beginnings of pretend play in each toddler and provide him/her with the support he/she needs to build and enjoy his/her play and to develop his/her social and language skills.

Movement Time
Movement time includes exciting and challenging physical activities. Running, jumping, climbing and riding a bike boost each toddler’s eagerness for exploration and the development of new skills. Encouraged and guided by our teachers, each toddler progresses from beginner to advanced, mastering the skills at his/her own pace. By playing actively indoors and outdoors, each toddler develops muscle strength, endurance, agility, coordination, balance, and flexibility, as well as building confidence and social skills thru interaction with the other kids.

Twos Curriculum

Following in the toddler’s footsteps, each two’s pursuit of independence continues! The two-year-old’s curiosity and desire to conquer his/her expanding world are accompanied by blossoming social skills and cognitive and language development. At Bright Kids Academy, our teachers foster each child’s developing abilities by offering him/her opportunities which promote exploration and learning, individual and independent choices, language and social skills.

Group Time
Book reading, songs, nursery rhymes, and storytelling are moments of delight for the two-year-old as his/her developing language skills and cognitive understanding allow him/her to capture their meaning or morals. Through these activities and with the support and guidance of our teachers, each child learns new concepts and develops his/her language, listening, and memory abilities. We are always happy to join!

Discovery Time
The two’s curiosity and eagerness to master the world around him/her surface in his/her exploration and learning. Our teachers’ focus at this age is to provide learning activities and experiences which offer each child opportunities to explore, manipulate, question, and experiment. Science projects, manipulation of learning materials, and sensory exploration foster each child’s critical thinking, problem-solving ability, and fine motor development. Bright Kids science experiments are always captivating!

Art Time
Various art activities and experimentation with different art materials offer each child rich sensory experiences and opportunities to creatively transform ideas into physical forms. These experiences also develop each child’s concentration and coordination abilities and his/her fine and gross motor skills. With the appropriate support from our teachers throughout each child’s creative process, his/her learning and development are enhanced.

Dramatic Play Time
The two-year-old enacts stories, routines, and favorite activities every day during his/her pretend play. The child also begins making connections between the concepts he/she learns and the plots he/she performs. As each child thinks, imagines, and communicates with others during his/her play, he/she develops social skills, problem-solving strategies, and language. Supported by our teachers, each child shares the delight of playing roles and telling stories!

Preschoolers Curriculum

The preschooler’s more complex understanding of self, of others, and of how things work influences his/her thinking and his/her social interactions. Assertiveness, initiative, and the formation of friendships characterize the preschool years. At Bright Kids Academy, we understand the importance of providing optimal support and guidance to foster each child’s new capabilities and to promote his/her further growth and development.

Group Time
Learning new concepts, making connections, and building understanding are the focus of our group times. The book reading and educational videos, together with the discussions that accompany them, are designed to promote reasoning, questioning, and the exploration of interesting and meaningful ideas. Each child also develops his/her language and listening skills through poetry, storytelling, songs, and show-and-tell activities. Bright Kids favorite show-and-tell item is her mystery box!

Discovery Time
Thinking, inquiring, and experimenting are all achieved through our science, nature, manipulatives, and games activities. The hands-on and open-ended science and nature activities provided by our teachers engage each child in exploration and learning about the world around him/her. The scientific approach of trial and error interprets error as valuable information and encourages each child to question and experiment without the fear of failure. Manipulatives and games, which require reasoning, logic, planning, and communication, stimulate each child’s intellectual development and social skills.

Art Time
The underlying idea behind all our art activities is that the process, rather than the product, is most important. Our teachers encourage each child to use his/her imagination and creativity to express his/her thoughts and ideas through activities such as painting, drawing, clay modeling, making collages, and cutting and pasting. These activities also represent opportunities for a child to learn new concepts, to develop his/her concentration abilities, and to practice his/her fine motor skills necessary for writing.

Dramatic Play Time
‘Pretend play is story in action!’ Pretend play and fantasy flourish during the preschool years and each child’s voluntary participation in play sustains his/her involvement and enhances the activity’s benefits. The symbolic function of pretend play is a major step in the development of abstract thinking. Planning, flexibility in thinking, problem solving, self-control, collaboration, language, and attention are other skills which a child develops through pretend play and are critical to school learning. The roles our teachers take on during the children’s dramatic play, whether as a materials provider, an observer, a participant, or a supporter, contribute to the complexity of the play and to the children’s learning.

Early Numeracy
Children learn numeracy through our daily activities and from our classroom environment. Guided by our teachers, our learning activities promote mathematical skills, such as counting, identifying patterns, symmetry, geometry, and measurement, as well as basic physics concepts about balance, inclined surfaces, and weight. Block play is an activity which provides learning experiences that support all areas of a child’s development. Flexible and adaptable, blocks offer an almost infinite variety of expressive opportunity from floor patterns and designs to vertical buildings and representations. Playing with blocks also offers each child opportunities for problem solving, perspective taking, reasoning, self-expression, communication, and collaboration.

Early Literacy and Handwriting
Literacy is everywhere! Our developmentally appropriate experiences and activities, such as book reading, singing, art activities, games, dramatic play, and journaling represent meaningful learning opportunities which incorporate early literacy concepts and handwriting in various forms. These activities foster your child’s print and phonological awareness, vocabulary, alphabet letters knowledge, narrative skills and handwriting. Additionally, the Get Set For School Program (Handwriting Without Tears) combines unique teaching strategies and hands-on manipulatives to build your child’s fine and gross motor skills. The lessons include body awareness, crayon grip, drawing, left and right, letter and number recognition, and capital letter and number formation.

Movement Time
Movement time includes exciting and challenging physical activities. Running, jumping, climbing, and riding a bike boost each child’s eagerness for exploration and the development of new skills. Encouraged and guided by our teachers, each child progresses from beginner to advanced, mastering the skills at his/her own pace. By playing actively indoors and outdoors, each child develops muscle strength, endurance, agility, coordination, balance, and flexibility, as well as builds confidence and social skills.

A Word About School Readiness
At Bright Kids Academy, we are aware of the current public policy demands for school readiness and, therefore, strive to prepare each child for formal school learning and academic performance. School readiness does not mean only literacy and numeracy knowledge, but also includes a set of emotional, social, physical, and cognitive skills. Self-control, cooperation, listening, following rules, concentration, reasoning, and problem solving are a few examples of skills which children need in order to learn and function successfully in school. The learning activities and experiences incorporated into our curriculum are designed to address and support an array of skills which each child needs for later academic performance. In an effort to contribute to each child’s school readiness, we also design specific learning activities which resemble the learning experiences that the child will encounter during his/her kindergarten and first school years. These activities are implemented in a manner which maintains the benefits of learning through play in order to help build the bridge between playful learning and formal school teaching and to prepare each child for later academic performance.