In all of our Yellow Brick Road preschools we follow a Play and Interest Based Curriculum. Rather than telling our teachers what topics to teach about we ask our teachers to hone in on their student’s current interest and build lessons around those interests! If you have ever wondered why one of our preschool classrooms is learning about dinosaurs while the next classroom is learning about transportation; that is why! We understand that all students have varying interests and we respect that not every predetermined topic will stick out to every student. When our teachers pick their topics they do so with an understanding that while they are making lesson plans for a group of students, they are most importantly making lesson plans for a group of individuals. Our teachers alter their lesson plans based on their student’s needs, goals, and prior knowledge!
While we do not give our teachers topics to teach about, we do give them all of the tools that they need to create fun and well thought-out lesson plans for any topic! We have two different curriculums that our teachers can pull lessons from to create their lesson plans.
The first curriculum is Teaching Strategies Gold. Teaching Strategies Gold is a curriculum that allows teachers to enter in developmental goals and milestones for each of their students and then it offers them different lessons that can be modified to fit any topic! This curriculum has so much to offer. On top of the hand-picked lessons, Teaching Strategies Gold can be used for evaluations, goal setting, and they have training opportunities for our teachers!
The second curriculum that our teachers use is called FunnyDaffer. FunnyDaffer is unique because our teachers can enter in the topic that they are teaching about and then lessons for all ages are at their finger-tips. All of their lessons can be modified to fit any developmental need or goal that our teachers may have for their class as they are planning their lessons!
The best similarity between these two curriculums is that they are both play based and customizable! We teach our students that learning is fun instead of making it feel like work. When our teachers write lessons that make our students feel like they are playing a game, our students retain the information, stay involved in the activity, and they are excited to learn more! This is how we prepare our students for kindergarten; so that when they graduate from our preschools they are ready and eager to learn!