Curriculum

Daily activities include dance, music, art, story reading and activities of coordinated lessons.

Through art, music, movement and structured play, preschoolers develop school readiness skills. The basics of listening, observing, organizing and following directions are woven into every activity. Fine-tuned motor skills, an important factor in school success, are developed through dance and art. Verbal development is encouraged, as is exploration through tactile stimulation.

Age-appropriate Academics: Academic preparation for kindergarten includes learning shapes, colors, letters, numbers and other skills. Academy Arts Preschool students do this through a variety of activities to address a range of learning styles. The academic activities are supplemented and coordinated with the art activities.

Dance: Dance, in particular, integrates kinesthetic learning with understanding. Preschool children do not conceptualize abstract processes (Piaget). They primarily learn through physical and sensory experiences. Thus, learning the art of dance helps young children develop knowledge, skill, and understanding about the world.

Physical development is one of the most obvious benefits dance classes have for children. The group dynamic in dance classes provides social awareness and respect for others as they take turns, perform and interact. Cognitive development occurs in dance as children understand that it can be used as a response to an idea or problem. Emotional maturity is gained as children learn.

Music: Research has found that learning music facilitates learning other subjects and enhances skills that children inevitably use in other areas. A 2016 study at the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute found that musical experiences in childhood can actually accelerate brain development, particularly in the areas of language acquisition and reading skills.

Exposing children to music during early development helps them learn the sounds and meanings of words. Dancing to music helps children build motor skills while allowing them to practice self-expression. For children as with adults, music helps strengthen memory skills.

Art: Many of the motions involved in making art, such as holding a paintbrush or scribbling with a crayon, are essential to the growth of fine motor skills in young children. For very young children, making art—or just talking about it—provides opportunities to learn words for colors, shapes and actions. The experience of making decisions and choices in the course of creating art carries over into other parts of life.

When kids are encouraged to express themselves and take risks in creating art, they develop a sense of innovation that will be important in their adult lives. Studies show that there is a correlation between art and other achievement.

With clear objectives through theme-based models, we are teaching preschool concepts in a constructive and structured way. In addition to circle time, dance class, music time and structured play, our students are partnered together and rotate through various learning centers. Each center has a focus such as math/numeracy, sensory exploration that strengthens fine motor skills, art – which is PROCESS over PRODUCT oriented and language arts – letters and words.

Our theme-based models carry through both academics and the arts of dance, music and visual art. Student confidence is built through display of their artwork at the school as well as at four presentations throughout the year both in-house and one off-campus community outreach.

To supplement our curriculum, Academy Arts Preschool hosts special visitors and exciting field trips. Special visitors have included dental hygienists, grandparents, firefighters and speech therapists. Our explorations have included trips to fall pumpkin patches, live children’s performances, including a back-stage tour, supermarkets and hands-on pizza-making events that support our food unit and more. Popular theme days include Friends day, Beach day, Dinosaur day, Field day, Grandparent day, Pajama day and Royal Manners day.