DOS AMIGOS EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTER

WHERE WE LEARN TO PLAY AND PLAY TO LEARN 

The most powerful tool we can give our youngest learners is the power of play! Play sets children up to be critical thinkers, risk takers, scientists, mathematicians, orators, writers, and good citizens of their community.

Our educational program is centered around experiences, and led by the children, their interests, and their abilities. Play provides children with the opportunity to actively explore, manipulate and interact with their environment and each other. This provokes children to question, problem solve, construct new ideas and discover the world around them. At the Dos Amigos Early Childhood Center, the children learn through hands-on experiences .We engage students through their senses; they need to see, hear, touch, taste and smell in order to have the richest learning experiences. By exploring and being actively engaged with their environment, children make sense and develop a new understanding of the world around them.

Our beautiful newly constructed Early Childhood Center offers state-of-the-art classrooms, sensory pathways,  multipurpose room for art, music,  STEAM , movement and much more! We offer outdoor learning environments including a cushioned playground, community garden. In the Center’s Early Childhood Program, children are given the freedom to explore and to grow in a loving, nurturing, and exciting environment. All of this adds to the children’s physical, emotional, cognitive and social growth.

Curriculum

Here at Dos Amigos we provide a creative, bilingual immersion program that is designed specifically for all the needs of our students whether monolingual or bilingual. At the present time pre-k lessons are offered daily both in English and Spanish. We utilize the Every Child Ready, Apple Tree curriculum for our pre-k grade level. 

We focus on development in four core areas:

• Social Emotional Development:  We design our program to build  competent and confident individuals.
  Achieving a sense of self – building a child’s self esteem
  Fostering a growth mindset
  Taking responsibility for self and others
  Behaving in a prosocial way

• Physical Development: Developing children’s gross (large muscle) and fine (small muscle) motor skills, allows children to take care of their personal needs (such as dressing themselves). Physical development can promote social and emotional development and self confidence as children learn to take control of their actions.

• Cognitive Development: Cognitive development refers to the mind and how it works. It involves how children think, how they see their world and how they use what they learn.
  Promote curiosity, wonder and expression
  Learning and problem solving
  Thinking critically and logically
  Representing and thinking symbolically

• Language Development: This includes understanding and communicating through words, both spoken and written. In early childhood, language becomes the main tool for establishing and maintaining relationships with adults and other children. Because words represent objects and ideas, language development is closely related to cognitive development. Language and literacy also go hand in hand. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing develop interdependently in children. Language development includes receptive (understanding language) and expressive (being able to communicate with words) language.